On hearing this she looked up at him, and there came over her face
that brilliant smile, which to him was perhaps the most potent of
her spells. 'What do you mean by wanting two?'
'I must have voice in it as well as you.'
'And what is your voice?'
'My voice is this. I told you last night that I loved you. This
morning I ask you to be my wife.'
'It is a very clear voice,' she said,--almost in a whisper; but in
a tone so serious that it startled him.
'It ought to be clear,' he said doggedly.
'Do you think I don't know that? Do you think that if I liked you
well last night I don't like you better now?'
'But do you like me?'
'That is just the thing I am going to say nothing about.'
'Isabel!'
'Just the one thing I will not allude to. Now you must listen to
me.'
'Certainly.'
'I know a great deal about you. We Americans are an inquiring
people, and I have found out pretty much everything.' His mind
misgave him as he felt she had ascertained his former purpose
respecting Mabel. 'You,' she said, 'among young men in England are
about the foremost, and therefore,--as I think,--about the foremost
in the world.
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