"Remember--any time, with or without notice. My offer is open until you accept it or definitely refuse it. Perhaps I never could make you love me; but I know I could love you if I let myself go."
"You have not answered me," said Miss Keogh. "Ask again," he smiled.
"Mrs. Ashton Welles is the only daughter of Mrs. Deering."
"So far as I am concerned, it is--really!"
"No? But you have a friend, a Mr. Wolfe--a Mr. Francis Wolfe?" She knew it from a newspaper item.
But Mr. Jerningham jumped up from his seat. "Marry me, dear girl! Marry me, I beg of you! You are the only woman in the world! You are the most beautiful ever created and, beyond all question, the cleverest. You are a genius! Why isn't all mankind on its knees worshiping? Will you marry me? Wait! Don't speak. I know what your answer will be."
Imagine the Sphinx--if the Sphinx were Irish and very beautiful--with those eyes and those lips! Guess? You couldn't guess where your soul was--or whose!
"Yes, I do," answered Jerningham, confidently. "I will write it on a piece of paper and prove it. But first tell me this: Will you take Mrs. Deering's case?"
"Very well." He wrote something on one of his cards, doubled it so she could not see what he had written, and gave it to her, saying, "Now answer me: Will you marry me?"
She looked at him a long time. He met her gaze squarely. Presently she said, very seriously:
"Look in the card," he said, also very seriously.
A vague alarm came into her purple-blue eyes. She was on the point of speaking, but he held up his hand, and said, earnestly:
"Please don't say it. We'll meet in London. You will enjoy the Continent later on. Now let us go and get your letter of credit, and see whether you like the stateroom that I ordered reserved." They did.
On the next day Jerningham's limousine took Miss Keogh and her hand-luggage to the steamer.-Jerningham was there to see her off. She had invited a dozen of her friends to do the same, and they were there--all of them women and most of them frankly envious, for her stateroom was full of beautiful flowers and baskets of wonderful fruit--quite as if she already were a millionaire!
As she said good-by to Jerningham there was in her eyes a look of intelligent, almost cold-blooded, gratitude which seemed to embrace Mr. Jerningham's kindness, his thoughtfulness, and his bank account.