Page:The Semi-detached House.djvu/272

 Rachel looked up with an air of intense astonishment.

"You are fond of that child, oh! Miss Monteneros, let him find in you the mother he has lost. It is in your power to make both the child and father happy."

"Oh, Mr, Willis, what are you saying? Stay one moment—" 'Then there was a pause, and to Willis' extreme surprise, she burst into a hearty laugh.

"I beg your pardon," she said, "but to think of all my exhortations to you to be happy, ending in your asking me to be your wife. Why, of all the methods of being miserable, which you are so fond of trying, you could not have invented one so certain to produce the desired unhappy result as that. I suppose there are not two people in England who would suit each other so little as we should. We do not care about each other, to begin with; and there are you, still in the deepest mourning, and avowedly inconsolable for the loss of your first wife, asking a woman every way dissimilar to her, to be your second."