Mercy murmured a few words of doubt; but she kissed her mother eloquently, and went about rosy and beaming, all that afternoon.
As for Griffith, his gratitude and his jealousy were now at war, and caused him a severe mental struggle.
Carrick, too, was spurred by jealousy, and came every day to the house, and besieged Blercy; and Griffith, who saw them together, and did not hear Mercy's replies, was excited, irritated, alarmed.
Mrs. Vint saw his agitation, and determined to bring matters to a climax. She was always giving him a side thrust; and, at last, she told him plainly that he was not behaving like a man. "If the girl is not good enough for you, why make a fool of her, and set her against a good husband?" And when he replied she was good enough for any man in England, "Then," said she, "why not show your respect for her as Paul Carrick does? He likes her well enough to go to church with her."
With the horns of this dilemma she so gored Kate Peyton's husband that, at last, she and Paul Carrick, between them, drove him out of his conscience.
So he watched his opportunity and got Mercy alone: he took her hand and told her he loved her, and that she was his only comfort in the world, and he found he could not live without her.
At this she blushed and trembled a little, and leaned her brow upon his shoulder, and was a happy creature for a few moments.
So far, fluently enough; but then he began to falter and stammer, and say that for certain reasons, he could not marry at all. But if she could be content with anything short of that, he would retire with her into a distant country, and there, where nobody could contradict him, would call her his wife, and treat her as his wife, and pay his debt of gratitude to her by a life of devotion.
As he spoke, her brow retired an inch or two from his shoulder; but she heard him quietly out, and then drew back and confronted him, pale, but to all appearance, calm.
"Call things by their right names," said she. "What you offer me this day, in my father's house, is, to be your mistress. Then--God forgive you, Thomas Leicester."
With this oblique and feminine reply, and one look of unfathomable reproach from her soft eyes, she turned her back on him; but remembering her manners, curtsied at the door; and so retired; and unpretending Virtue lent her such true dignity, that he was struck dumb, and made no attempt to detain her.