“You are overwrought,” he said. “You don’t know what you are saying. What have I done, that you should wish to break off your engagement? I have striven to please you, to make you happy. Do you realise that in less than two months we are to be married? You would make me ridiculous. People will laugh. It will be scandalous.”
His voice gathered anger as he considered the amusement that would arise at his expense when it became known that the young bride he had chosen had jilted him—jilted the wealthy Edward Morgan almost on the eve of the wedding.
“It is absurd!” he added. “You don’t realise what you ask.”
“Oh, please!” she cried, and turned a white frightened face towards him. “Don’t be angry with me. I’m so sorry. I ought never to have become engaged to you. I don’t love you.”
He sounded a note of impatience.
“You raised that point at the time when I proposed,” he said. “I thought we had settled that. Love will come with marriage. I have enough for both.”
“Don’t you see that that only makes it worse?” she said in a voice that shook with nervousness. “I can never love you. I know that now. I’ve tried. Oh! please be generous and forgive me. I am so sorry for causing you pain. I’m so sorry.”
She broke down, and sat huddled in a corner of the motor, and sobbed.
Mr Morgan sank back in his corner and stared out at the darkened street. Never in his life had he felt so annoyed and upset. At the back of his mind lurked the uncomfortable conviction that he had been a fool, that his world would call him a fool, an old fool for falling in love with a pretty face.
He wished he had never seen Prudence, wished that he had never asked her to become his wife. Since he had asked her and she had accepted him, he had no intention of acceding now to her absurd request for release. She was placing him in a most invidious position. She seemed to have no appreciation of what was right and due to him. It would be necessary to make her see that he had to be considered in this as well as herself. He thought of his mother, of the annoyance this would cause her. He determined to ask her to intercede with the girl in his behalf. It was impossible that she should retract from her promise at the eleventh hour.