He had put forward this condition, perfectly sure that she would refuse
to accept it. He could not understand.
"You accept that condition?"
"Yes." Having gone thus far with her plot, Kitty would have died
rather than retreated; Irish temperament.
Thomas was moved to a burst of confidence. "I know that I am poor, and
to the best of my belief, honest. Moreover, perhaps I should be
compelled by the exigencies of circumstance to leave you after a few
months. I am not a rich man, masquerading for the sport of it; I am
really poor and grateful for any work. It is only fair that I should
tell you this much, that I am running away from no one. Beyond the
fact that I am the son of a very great but unknown scholar, a farmer of
mediocre talents who lost his farm because he dreamed of humanity
instead of cabbages, I have nothing to say." He said it gravely,
without pride or veiled hauteur.
"That is frank enough," replied Kitty, curiously stirred. "You will
not find us hard task-masters. Be here this afternoon at three. My
father will wish to talk to you. And be as frank with him as you have
been with me."
She smiled and nodded brightly, and turned away. He had a glimpse of a
tan shoe and a slim tan-silk ankle, which poised birdlike above the
high doorsill; and then she vanished into the black shadow of the
companionway. She afterward confessed to me that her sensation must
have been akin to that of a boy who had stolen an apple and beaten the
farmer in the race to the road.
We all make the mistake of searching for our drama, forgetting that it
arrives sooner or later, unsolicited.
Bewitched. Thomas should have been the happiest man alive, but the
devil had recruited him for his miserables. Her piquant face no longer
confronting and bewildering him, he saw this second net into which he
had permitted himself to be drawn. As if the first had not been
colossal enough! Where would it all end? Private secretary and two
hundred the month--forty pounds--this was a godsend. But to take her
orders day by day, to see her, to be near her. . . . Poverty-stricken
wretch that he was, he should have declined. Now he could not; being a
simple Englishman, he had given his word and meant to abide by it.
There was one glimmer of hope; her father. He was a practical merchant
and would not permit a man without a past (often worse than a man with
one) to enter his establishment.