Chapter V

Two days later he ascended the step ladder again.

With leather gloves, a gardening apron, and with the aid of a stick she was coaxing some drooping Chinese daisies into the upright life.

"Good morning," he said pleasantly, "what extraordinary weather we are having."

She made the most distant acknowledgment and continued in her attentions to the flowers.

"And how is the cat?" he asked with all the bland benevolence of an Episcopalian bench. She made no reply.

"Poor Tibby," he said with gentle melancholy--

"Poor quiet soul, poor modest lass,
Thine is a tale that shall not pass."

The girl made no response.

"On the subject of De Gotha," he went on with an apologetic hesitation, "I----"

The girl straightened her back and turned a flushed face towards him. A strand of hair had loosened and hung limply over her forehead, and this she brushed back quickly.

"As you insist upon humiliating me," she said, "let me add to my self abasement by apologizing for the injustice I did you. My copy of the Almanac De Gotha is an old one and the page on which your name occurs has been torn out evidently by one of my maids----"

"For curling paper, I'll be bound," he wagged his head wisely.

"Immortal Caesar, dead and turned to clay,
Might stop a hole to keep the wind away;
The Duke's ancestral records well may share
The curly splendours of the housemaid's hair."

As he improvised she turned impatiently to the flower bed.

"Miss Terrill!" he called, and when she looked up with a resigned air, he said--

"Cannot we be friends?"

Her glance was withering.

"Don't sniff," he entreated earnestly, "don't despise me because I'm a duke. Whatever I am, I am a gentleman."

"You're a most pertinacious and impertinent person," said the exasperated girl.

"Alliteration's artful aid," quoth the Duke admiringly. "Listen----"

He was standing on the top step of the ladder balancing himself rather cleverly, for Hank was away shopping.

"Miss Terrill," he began. There was no mistaking the earnestness of his voice, and the girl listened in spite of herself.

"Miss Terrill, will you marry me?"

The shock of the proposal took away her breath.

"I am young and of good family; fairly good looking and sound in limb. I have a steady income of L1,200 a year and a silver property in Nevada that may very easily bring in ten thousand a year more. Also," he added, "I love you."

No woman can receive a proposal of marriage, even from an eccentric young man perched on the top of a step ladder, without the tremor of agitation peculiar to the occasion.

Alicia Terrill went hot and cold, flushed and paled with the intensity of her various emotions, but made no reply.

"Very well then!" said the triumphant Duke, "we will take it as settled. I will call----"

"Stop!" She had found her voice. Sifting her emotions indignation had bulked overwhelmingly and she faced him with flaming cheek and the lightning of scorn in her eyes.

"Did you dare think that your impudent proposal had met with any other success than the success it deserved?" she blazed. "Did you imagine because you are so lost to decency, and persecute a girl into listening to your odious offer, that you could bully her into acceptance?"

"Yes," he confessed without shame.

"If you were the last man in the world," she stormed, "I would not accept you. If you were a prince of the blood royal instead of being a wretched little continental duke with a purchased title"--she permitted herself the inaccuracy--"if you were a millionaire twenty times over, I would not marry you!"

"Thank you," said the Duke politely.

"You come here with your egotism and your braggadocio to play triton to our minnows, but I for one do not intend to be bullied into grovelling to your dukeship."

"Thank you," said the Duke again.

"But for the fact that I think you have been led away by your conceit into making this proposal, and that you did not intend it to be the insult that it is, I would make you pay dearly for your impertinence."

The Duke straightened himself.

"Do I understand that you will not marry me?" he demanded.

"You may most emphatically understand that," she almost snapped.

"Then," said the Duke bitterly, "perhaps if you cannot love me you can be neighbourly enough to recommend me a good laundry."

This was too much for the girl. She collapsed on to the lawn, and, sitting with her face in her hands, she rocked in a paroxysm of uncontrollable laughter.

The Duke, after a glance at her, descended the steps in his stateliest manner.