“But it’s a gracious state”—­stammered poor Priscilla.

“Loving you?  Loving you?”

“No, no—­not being able to speak.  It’s always best—­”

“It isn’t.  It’s best to be true to one’s self, to show honestly what one feels, as I am now—­as I am now—­” And he fell to kissing her hands again.

“Tussie, this isn’t being honest,” said Lady Shuttleworth sternly, “it’s being feverish.”

“Listen to her!  Was ever a man interrupted like this in the act of asking a girl to marry him?”

“Tussie!” cried Lady Shuttleworth.

“Ethel, will you marry me?  Because I love you so?  It’s an absurd reason—­the most magnificently absurd reason, but I know there’s no other why you should—­”

Priscilla was shaken and stricken as she had never yet been; shaken with pity, stricken with remorse.  She looked down at him in dismay while he kissed her hands with desperate, overwhelming love.  What was she to do?  Lady Shuttleworth tried to draw her away.  What was she to do?  If Tussie was overwhelmed with love, she was overwhelmed with pity.

“Ethel—­Ethel—­” gasped Tussie, kissing her hands, looking up at her, kissing them again.

Pity overcame her, engulfed her.  She bent her head down to his and laid her cheek an instant on the absurd flannel nightingale, tenderly, apologetically.

“Ethel—­Ethel,” choked Tussie, “will you marry me?”

“Dear Tussie,” she whispered in a shaky whisper, “I promise to answer you when you are well.  Not yet.  Not now.  Get quite well, and then if you still want an answer I promise to give you one.  Now let me go.”

“Ethel,” implored Tussie, looking at her with a wild entreaty in his eyes, “will you kiss me?  Just once—­to help me to live—­”

And in her desire to comfort him she stooped down again and did kiss him, soberly, almost gingerly, on the forehead.

He let her hands slide away from between his and lay back on his pillows in a state for the moment of absolute beatitude.  He shut his eyes, and did not move while she crept softly out of the room.

“What have you done?” asked Lady Shuttleworth trembling, when they were safely in the passage and the door shut behind them.

“I can’t think—­I can’t think,” groaned Priscilla, wringing her hands.  And, leaning against the balusters, then and there in that most public situation she began very bitterly to cry.

XIX

Priscilla went home dazed.  All her suitors hitherto had approached her ceremoniously, timidly, through the Grand Duke; and we know they had not approached very near.  But here was one, timid enough in health, who was positively reckless under circumstances that made most people meek.  He had proposed to her arrayed in a blue flannel nightingale, and Priscilla felt that headlong self-effacement could go no further.  “He must have a great soul,” she said to herself over and over again during the drive home, “a great, great soul.”  And it seemed of little use wiping her tears away, so many fresh ones immediately took their place.