CHAPTER XXXIV.

THE RELUCTANT PROPOSAL.

“Zana, child, will you see to the chrysanthemums that were trailing across the walk this morning?—they will be trodden down.”

I looked in Turner’s face as he said this, and felt a mischievous smile quivering on my lips. The dear old fellow grew red as a winter apple, then a grave, reproving look followed, and I was glad to escape into the garden.

It was very wrong, I admit, but a curiosity to see how Turner would make love overpowered all sense of honor. I confess to lingering in sight of the windows, cautiously keeping myself out of view all the time. Turner and Maria still kept their seats by the breakfast-table. His face was toward me, but I could discern that one elbow was pressed on the table, and he sat sideways, looking hard at the opposite wall while speaking. But Maria was in full view, and a very picturesque portrait she made framed in by the open window. I watched her face as it changed from perplexity to wonder, from wonder to a strange sort of bashful pleasure. Her cheeks grew red; her great, black, Spanish eyes lighted up like those of a deer; yet she seemed ashamed of the feelings speaking there, as if they were unbecoming to her years.

All at once she arose, and, coming round the table, leaned against the window-frame. This movement brought me within hearing, but I could not escape without being discovered; so after taking one wrong step, I was forced into another still more dishonorable. At first Maria spoke in her usual broken English, which I cannot attempt to give, as its peculiarity lay rather in the tone than the words.

“This is very strange, Mr. Turner. Why do you speak of this thing now after so many years? What has happened that you talk to me of marriage? You say it is better for the child—better for us all. But why?”

“I will make a good husband to you—at any rate do the best I can!” pleaded poor Turner, sadly out of place in his love-making.

“Perhaps you have fallen in love with me all of a sudden,” said my bonne, half bitterly, half in a questioning manner, as if she faintly hoped he would assent to the idea.

“I—what, I fall in love!” cried Turner, and his face writhed into a miserable smile; “it isn’t in me to make a fool of myself at this age. I hope you have a better opinion of me than that.”

She answered rapidly, and partly in Spanish. There was a good deal of womanly bitterness in her voice, but I could only gather a few hasty ejaculations.

“You joke, Mr. Turner—you mock—you have found a way of amusing yourself with the lone stranger. I know that you always hated us Spaniards, but you never mocked me in this way till now.”

“There it is again,” exclaimed the poor suitor. “I guessed how it would all turn out; never did know how to manage one of the sex—never shall! Look here, Maria, I’m in earnest—very much in earnest; ask Lady Catherine—ask Zana if I’m not determined on it.”

Turner gathered himself up, moved awkwardly enough toward Maria, and taking her hand looked at it wistfully, as if quite uncertain what to do next.

“I never kissed a woman’s hand in my life,” he said, desperately, “but I’ll kiss yours, on my soul I will, if you’ll just marry me without more ado.”

She leaned heavily against the window, and said more temperately,

“Say, why have you asked this of me?”

I do not know what Turner would have replied, for, obeying the impulse of the moment, I came forward, and before either of them were aware of my approach, stood in the room.

“Tell her the whole, dear Mr. Turner,” I said, going up to Maria with a degree of reverence I had never felt for her before. “She ought to know it—she must know that you are asking her to marry you that Lady Catherine may not turn us all adrift on the world; that the people may stop pointing at me because I have no father.”

Maria flung her arms around me.

“There—there!” exclaimed Turner, moving toward the door, “you see I’ve done my best, Zana, and have got everybody crying. Tell her yourself, child; just arrange it between you; call for me when all’s ready; what I say I stand to.”

The old man writhed himself out of the room, leaving Maria and I together.

My good, bonne was greatly agitated, and besought me to explain the