There _was_ something I wished to say to you, that I hoped for a more auspicious occasion...." He hurried on with it suddenly as a thing to be got over with at all hazards.

"It was to say that I hoped you might not find it utterly beyond you to think of marrying me." He saw her sway a little, holding still to her chair, and moved toward her a step, dizzy himself with the sudden onset of emotion.

"But now that it is said, if it distresses you we will say no more about it." She waved him back for a moment without altering her strained, trapped attitude.
"Have you said this to mamma?
And has she--has she said anything to you?
About me, I mean; how I might take it, or anything ?" "She said that she couldn't answer for you; that it was your feeling that must be taken into account.

She put me, so to speak, on my own feet in so far as _that_ was concerned." He waited for her answer to that, and none coming, though he saw that she grew a little easier, he went on presently.

"There is, however, much that I feel ought to be said about my feeling for you, what it means to me, what I hoped----" She stopped him with a gesture; he could see her lovely manner coming back to her as quiet comes to the surface of a smitten pool.
"That--one may take for granted, may one not?
Since you _have_ asked me, that the feeling that goes to it is all I have a right to ask ?" "Quite, quite," he assured her.