Though his tone scolded Aurora sharply for her lack of faith, Estelle's ear caught a trembling edge to his voice expressive of deep feeling. Estelle had the good sense to see that Gerald must inevitably desire to make more exposition of his allegiance, and the good feeling to know that this could be done better if she were not present. Gerald, with his little peace-offering, was at the moment in favor with Estelle. His explicitness, his righteous violence, his entire adequacy on the subject of Charlie Hunt, had charmed her. She also wanted Aurora to have any comfort the hour might afford. She on the spot feigned to understand Busteretto's pawing of her dress as an expression of desire to go into the garden and see the little sparrows. She swept him up from the floor with one hand and, tucking him under her arm, slipped out of the room. Gerald stood grasping his elbows. He had a look like that of some man, known so far as a harmless retiring burgher, about to make a public confession which will change all, bringing his head perhaps to the block; or the look of a man on the verge of a precipice, still half resisting the desire to jump, yet knowing that he will jump, nothing can save him from it; the look of a man, in fine, pregnant with intention, but walking in a dream. There was silence for a minute after Estelle left the room. Then Gerald said very stiffly, very formally: "If you would do me the honor, dearest Aurora, the very great honor, of consenting to take my name, the right I should have to defend you would be--would be--part of my great happiness." Aurora stared at him. Beneath the frank investigation of her eyes his own dropped in modesty and insuperable embarrassment. There was another silence before he added: "I would try very much to make you happy." Aurora repressed the first words that came to her lips,--and set aside the next ones that rose in her mind to say. Silence again reigned for a moment. Then, with the serious face, almost invisibly rippling, that betokened in her a secret and successful fight against laughter, she said in what she called her good English, faintly reminiscent of Antonia's: "I am aware, my dear Gerald, of the honor, the very great honor, you do me. I thank you--for coming up to the scratch like a little man. But the feeling I have that I could never be _warthy_ of so much honor deceydes me to declane. Gerald," she went on, discarding her English, "don't say another word! You dear, dear boy! The things you want to defend me against don't amount to a row of pins when all I've got to do if it comes to the pinch is pack my grip and clear out. Thank you all the same, you pet, for your kindness. Don't think of it again. I am sort of glad, though, you've got that proposal out of your system. Now we can go back to a sensible life." CHAPTER XXI