Read Online The girl in the blue dress by Mary Burchell - Free Book Online Page A

dress."
    "Oh, Geoffrey!" She
was enchanted, and almost completely
reassured.
    "Then I forgot about it, "
    "Oh, Geoffrey!" she
said again, and this time she was not so enchanted.
    "Until quite recently.
When I re-examined the idea once more, " again he gave her that teasing smile,
"and found it quite a sound notion."
    She laughed. She knew that
she was meant to laugh, and that this was no unusual way for Geoffrey to talk.
But some utterly perverse side of her kept on discovering a second, disturbing
meaning in everything he said. He had found it "a sound notion" to
propose marriage to her. Why?
    "Are you really so
surprised that I want you to marry me?" he asked her at that moment. "You
reacted as though nothing were further from your thoughts. Did you never think,
in all the years we have known each other, that it was the logical, almost the
inevitable, conclusion?"
    "Yes, " she said
quietly and frankly, "I did think so sometimes. I, it doesn't matter my
saying so now, I hoped so. But you told me once, years ago, that you couldn't ever afford
to marry."
    "Well, I suppose that's still true, so far as
many girls are concerned." He laughed
rather shortly, she thought. "Maybe some people would say I oughtn't to
ask you now, Beverley. I haven't a great deal to offer you, in the worldly
sense."
    "It doesn't matter, " she said quickly.
"You'll be a success one day, I know. And, even if you're not, I still
don't mind."
    "You're a darling." He held her close and
kissed her, with an odd touch of something
like remorse. Perhaps because he
felt that for her sake he should abandon his artistic struggles and accept the
hum drum prosperity which his father still offered. "I'm not really
half good enough for you, you know, " he exclaimed.
    "That's for me to say, isn't it?" She
smiled up at him.
    "I don't know. Perhaps I'm being a selfish
hound in asking you." And for a moment he looked sombre, and somehow a
good deal older than his age.
    "No, you're not. You are making me very happy,
" Beverley told him. "And no man can do more for a girl than
that."
    He laughed at that and kissed
her again. "Then we're engaged?" he said.
    "Yes, we're engaged, "
she repeated slowly. "I couldn't, have imagined, such a thing, when I came down here this
evening."
    "Shall I walk back with you and tell your
mother now?" he asked. "Or would you like to wait to tell people
until you have your ring?"
    "I don't specially want to wait. I, I don't
even mind if I don't have a ring. Or only a
very modest one, " she said earnestly. For it seemed to her that the
provision of an expensive ring might present a problem for Geoffrey, whom she
still regarded as a struggling artist.
    However, he was emphatic about the necessity of a
ring. "Of course you will have one! Either you can have one of your own choice, or else you can have the very
beautiful ring which my grandmother left me, among her other possessions. It would need resetting, I daresay. But it has a very fine diamond in it, and
a couple of sapphires, if I remember rightly."
    Beverley said that she would love to have his grandmother's ring. And indeed it seemed to her
that, in owning a family ring, she
would feel a sense of permanence and continuity in her link with Geoffrey which
was just what her heart craved.
    "Then come on' indoors now, and I'll show it
to you, " he said. And arm-in-arm they went into the house.
    The ring, which he produced from a concealed drawer in his writing-desk, proved to be beautiful
and o bviously of value. The setting,
however, was rather heavy and old-fashioned, and Geoffrey immediately began to
make a sketch of how he thought it should be reset.
    She hung over, watching him, so close that her hair
brushed against his cheek. And once he turned his head and kissed her. "There,
how do you like that?" He held out the sketch for her approval.
    "It's wonderful. It makes it more my
ring."
    "Then I'll take it into Castleton tomorrow, "
Geoffrey said. "And I'll insist that they have it ready at,