Page:Edgar Wallace - The Green Rust.djvu/101

Rh Beale, if you will excuse my hurting your feelings—and I know you are half in love with him"

She felt her face go hot.

"How dare you!" she flamed.

"Don't be silly," he begged. "I dare anything in these circumstances, the greater outrage includes the less. If I abdicate you I feel myself entitled to tease you. No, I think you had better not place too much faith in Mr. Beale, who doesn't seem to be a member of the regular police force, and is, I presume, one of those amateur gentlemen who figure in divorce cases."

She did not reply. Inwardly she was boiling, and she recognized with a little feeling of dismay that it was not so much the indignity which he was offering her, as his undisguised contempt for the genius of Beale, which enraged her.

They had left the town and were spinning through the country when she spoke again.

"Will you be kind enough to tell me what you intend doing?"

He had fallen into a reverie and it was evidently a pleasant reverie, for he came back to the realities of life with an air of reluctance.

"Eh? Oh, what am I going to do with you? Why, I am going to marry you."

"Suppose I refuse?"

"You won't refuse. I am offering you the easiest way out. When you are married to me your danger is at an end. Until you marry me your hold on life is somewhat precarious."

"But why do you insist upon this?" she asked, bewildered, "If you don't love me, what is there in marriage for you? There are plenty of women who would be delighted to have you. Why should you want to marry a girl without any influence or position—a shop-girl, absolutely penniless?"

"It's a whim of mine," he said lightly, "and it's a whim I mean to gratify."

"Suppose I refuse at the last moment?"

"Then," he said significantly, "you will be sorry.