He laughed as if in spite of himself. "But supposing I promised not to kiss you?"
"Even so," I said, and I couldn't help biting the end of my pen. "It could happen that I might get a feeling I wanted to kiss some one else--and there it is! Once you're married, everything nice is wrong!"
"Evangeline! I won't let you go--out of my life--you strange little witch! You have upset me, disturbed me--I can settle to nothing. I seem to want you so very much."
"Pouf!" I said, and I pouted at him.
"You have everything in your life to fill it--position, riches, friends. You don't want a green-eyed adventuress."
I bent down and wrote steadily to Lady Katherine. I would be there about six o'clock, I said, and thanked her in my best style.
"If I let you go, it is only for the time," Mr. Carruthers said as I signed my name. "I intend you to marry me--do you hear?"
"Again I say, 'Qui vivre verra!'" I laughed and rose with the note in my hand.
Lord Robert looked almost ready to cry when I told him I was off in the afternoon.
"I shall see you again," he said. "Lady Katherine is a relation of my aunt's husband, Lord Merrenden. I don't know her myself, though."
I do not believe him. How can he see me again? Young men do talk a lot of nonsense!
"I shall come over on Wednesday to see how you are getting on," Mr. Carruthers said. "Please do be in."
I promised I would, and then I came up-stairs.
And so it has come to an end, my life at Branches. I am going to start a new phase of existence, my first beginning as an adventuress!
How completely all one's ideas can change in a few days! This day three weeks ago Mrs. Carruthers was alive. This day two weeks ago I found myself no longer a prospective heiress, and only three days ago I was contemplating calmly the possibility of marrying Mr. Carruthers; and now, for heaven, I would not marry any one! And so, for fresh woods and pastures new! Oh, I want to see the world, and lots of different human beings; I want to know what it is makes the clock go round--that great big clock of life. I want to dance and to sing and to laugh, and to live--and--and--yes, perhaps some day to kiss some one I love!