Whether Ronald Le Breton’s abstruse speculations on the theory of heredity were well founded or not, it certainly did happen, at any rate, that the more he saw of Selah Briggs the better he liked her; and the more Selah saw of him the better she liked him in return. Curiously enough, too, Selah did actually recognise in him what he fancied he recognised in himself, that part of his brother’s nature (not all wholly assumed) which was just what Selah had first been drawn to admire in Herbert himself. It wasn’t merely the originality of his general point of view: it was something more deep-seated and undefinable than that—in a word, his idiosyncrasy. Selah Briggs, with her peculiar fiery soul and rebellious nature, found in both the Le Bretons something that seemed at once to satisfy her wants, to fulfil her desires, to saturate her affinities: and with Ronald, as with Herbert before, she was conscious of a certain awe and respect which was all the more pleasant to her because her untamed spirit had never felt anything like it with any other human being. She didn’t understand them, and she didn’t want to understand them: that constituted just the very charm of their whole personality to her peculiar fancy. All the other people she had ever met were as transparent as glass, for good or for evil; she could see through all their faults and virtues as easily as one sees through a window: the Le Bretons were to her inscrutable, novel, incomprehensible, inexplicable, and she prized them for their very inscrutability. And so it came to pass, that almost by a process of natural and imperceptible transference, she passed on at last to Ronald’s account very much the same intensity of feeling that she had formerly felt towards his brother Herbert.
But at the same time, Selah never for a moment let him see it. She was too proud to confess now that she could ever love another man: the Mr. Walters she had once believed in had never, never, never existed: and she would raise no other idol in future to take the place of that vanished ideal. She was grateful to Ronald, and even fond of him: but that was all-outwardly at least. She never let him see, by word or act, that in her heart of hearts she was beginning to love him. And yet Ronald instinctively knew it. He himself could not have told you why; but he knew it. Even a woman cannot hide a secret from a man with that peculiarly penetrating intuitive temperament which belongs to sensitive, delicate types like Ronald Le Breton’s.
One Sunday evening, when Selah had been spending a few hours at Edie’s lodgings (Ronald always made it an excuse for finding them a supper, on the ground that Selah was really his guest, though he could not conveniently ask her to his own rooms), he walked home towards Notting Hill with Selah; and as they crossed the Regent’s Park, he took the opportunity to say something to her that he had had upon his mind for a few weeks past, in some vague, indefinite, half-unconscious fashion.
‘Selah,’ he began, a little timidly, ‘don’t you think it’s very probable we shan’t have Ernest here much longer with us?’
‘I’m afraid it is, Ronald,’ Selah answered. She had got quite accustomed now to calling him Ronald. With such a poor, weak, sickly fellow as that, why really, after all, it did not much matter.
‘Well, Selah,’ Ronald went on, gravely, his eyes filling with tears as he spoke, ‘in that case, you know, I can’t think what’s to become of poor Edie. It’s a dreadful contingency to talk about, Selah, and I can’t bear talking about it; but we MUST face these things, however terrible, mustn’t we? and in this case one’s absolutely bound to face it for poor Edie’s sake as well as for Ernest’s. Selah, she must have a home to go to, when dear Ernest’s taken from us.’
‘I’m very sorry for her, Ronald,’ Selah answered, with unusual softness of manner, ‘but I really don’t see how a home can possibly be provided for her.’
‘I do,’ Ronald answered, more calmly; ‘and for their sakes, Selah, I want you to help me in trying to provide it.’
‘How?’ Selah asked, looking up in his face curiously, as they passed into a ray of lamplight.
‘Listen, Selah, and I’ll tell you. Why, by marrying me.’
‘Never?’ Selah answered, firmly, and with a decided tinge of the old Adam in her trembling voice. ‘Never, Ronald! Never, never, never!’
‘Wait a minute, Selah,’ Ronald pleaded, ‘till you’ve heard the end of what I have to say to you. Consider that when dear Ernest’s gone (oh! Selah, you must excuse me; it makes me cry so to think of it), there’ll be nowhere on earth for poor little Edie and Dot to go to.’
‘Did ever a man propose to a girl so extraordinarily in all this world,’ Selah thought to herself, angrily. ‘He actually expects me to marry him in order to provide a home for his precious sister-in-law. That’s really carrying unselfishness a step too far, I call it.’
‘Edie couldn’t come and live with me, of course,’ Ronald went on, quickly, ‘if I were a bachelor; but if I were married, why then, naturally, she and Dot could come and live with us; and she could earn a little money somehow, no doubt; and, at any rate, it’d be better for her than starvation.’
Selah stopped a minute, and tapped the hard ground two or three times angrily with the point of her umbrella. ‘And me, Ronald?’ she said in a curious defiant voice. ‘And ME? I suppose you’ve forgotten all about ME. You don’t ask me to marry you because you love me; you don’t ask me whether I love you or not; you only propose to me that I should quietly turn domestic housekeeper for Mrs. Ernest Le Breton. And for my part, I answer you plainly, once for all, that I’m not going to do it—no, never, never, never!’
She spoke haughtily, flashing her eyes at him in the fierce old fashion, and Ronald was almost frightened at the angry intensity of her contemptuous gestures. ‘Selah,’ he cried, trying to take her hand, which she tore away from him hurriedly: ‘Selah, you misunderstand me. I only approached the subject that way because I didn’t want to seem overweening and presumptuous. It’s a very great piece of vanity, it seems to me, for any man to ask a woman whether she loves him. I’m too conscious of all my own faults and failings, Selah, to venture upon asking you ever to love me; but I do love you, Selah, I’m sure I do love you; and I hoped, I somehow fancied—it may have been mere fancy, but I DID imagine—that I detected, I can’t say how, that you did really love me, too, just a very very little. Oh, Selah, it’s because I really love you that I ask you whether you’ll marry me, such as I am; I know I’m a poor sort of person to marry, but I ventured to hope you might love me just a little for all that.&rsqu............