“Um?” said Scarlett absently, trying to peer through
Wedding dress rentalthe crowd of arguing men to where Ashleystill sat talking at Melanie’s feet.
“Yes!” whispered Charles, in a rapture that she had neither laughed, screamed nor fainted, as hehad always imagined young girls did under such circumstances. “I love you! You are the most—the most—” and he found his tongue for the first time in his life. “The most beautiful girl I’ve everknown and the sweetest and the kindest, and you have the dearest ways and I love you with all myheart. I cannot hope that you could love anyone like me but, my dear Miss O’Hara, if you can giveme any encouragement, I will do anything in the world to make you love me. I will—”
Charles stopped, for he couldn’t think of anything difficult enough of accomplishment to reallyprove to Scarlett the depth of his feeling, so he said simply: “I want to marry you.”
Scarlett came back to earth with a jerk, at the sound of the word “marry.” She had been thinkingof marriage and of Ashley, and she looked at Charles with poorly concealed irritation. Why mustthis calf-like fool day when she was so worried she was aboutto lose her mind? She looked into the pleading brown eyes and she saw none of the beauty of a shyboy’s first love, of the adoration of an ideal come true or the wild happiness and tenderness thatwere sweeping through him like a flame. Scarlett was used to men asking her to marry them, menmuch more attractive than Charles Hamilton, and men who had more finesse than to propose at abarbecue when she had more important matters on her mind. She only saw a boy of twenty, red asa beet and looking very silly. She wished that she could tell him how silly he looked. Butautomatically, the words Ellen had taught her to say in such emergencies rose to her lips andcasting down her eyes, from force of long habit, she murmured: “Mr. Hamilton, I am not unawareof the honor you have bestowed on me in wanting me to become your wife, but this is all sosudden that I do not know what to say.”
That was a neat way of smoothing a man’s
Office Deskvanity and yet keeping him on the string, and Charlesrose to it as though such bait were new and he the first to swallow it.
“I would wait forever! I wouldn’t want you unless you were quite sure. Please, Miss O’Hara, tellme that I may hope!”
“Um,” said Scarlett, her sharp eyes noting that Ashley, who had not risen to take part in the wartalk, was smiling up at Melanie. If this fool who was grappling for her hand would only keep quietfor a moment, perhaps she could hear what they were saying. She must hear what they said. Whatdid Melanie say to him that brought that look of interest to his eyes?
Charles’ words blurred the voices she strained to hear.
“Oh, hush!” she hissed at him, pinching his hand and not even looking at him.
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