“No, I am not going out,” admitted the girl reluctantly.  “I am on duty, you know.  Somebody may arrive at any minute,” she added, not quite ingenuously.  “Let us hope it will be your sister.”

“I hope not—­not just yet,” he protested.  “It is so long, Miss Masters, since I have seen you alone.  That is my excuse for having remained such an unconscionable time.  I have to seize an opportunity.”

She made no remark, sitting back in the chair, her fine head bent a little, thoughtfully, her hands folded quietly in her lap, in an attitude of resignation to the inevitable.

“You can’t mistake me,” he went on at last eagerly.  “I have kept to the stipulation; I have been silent for a long time.  I have been to see you, certainly, but not so often as I should have liked, and I have said nothing to you of the only thing that was in my head.  Now”—­he hesitated for an instant, then completed his phrase with an intonation almost passionate—­“now I want my reward!  Can’t you—­can’t you give it me, Mary?”

The girl said nothing for a moment, looking away from him into the corners of the empty room, her delicate eyebrows knitted a little, as though she sought inspiration from some of Lady Garnett’s choicer bibelots, from the little rose and amber shepherdess of Watteau, who glanced out at her daintily, imperturbably from the midst of her fete galante.  At last she said quietly: 

“I am sorry, Mr. Sylvester, I can only say, as I said before, it is a great honour you do me, but it’s impossible.”

“Perhaps I should have waited longer,” suggested Charles, after a moment’s silence, in which he appeared to be deeply pondering her sentence.  “I have taken you by surprise; you have not sufficiently considered——­”

“Oh, I have considered,” cried the girl quickly, with a sudden flush.  “I have considered it more seriously than you may believe, more, perhaps, than I ought.”

“Than you ought?” he interrupted blankly.

“Yes,” she said simply.  “I mean that if it could ever have been right to answer you as you wished, it would have been right all at once; thinking would not alter it.  I am sorry, chiefly, that I allowed this—­this procrastination; that I did not make you take my decision that night, at Lady Mallory’s.  Yes, for that I was to blame.  Only, some day I think you will see that I was right, that it would never have done.”

“Never have done!” he repeated, with an accent full of grieved resentment.  “I think it would have done so admirably.  I hardly understand——­”

“I mean,” said poor Mary helplessly, “that you estimated me wrongly.  I am frivolous—­your interests would not have been safe in my hands.  You would have married me on a misunderstanding.”

“No,” said Charles morosely, “I can’t believe that!  You are not plain with me, you are not sincere.  You don’t really believe that you are frivolous, that we should not suit.  In what way am I so impossible?  Is it my politics that you object to?  I shall be happy to discuss them with you.  I am not intolerant; I should not expect you to agree with me in everything.  You give me no reasons for this—­this absurd prejudice; you are not direct; you indulge in generalizations.”