Marry a Stranger by Susan Barrie Page A

fact it has never been a habit of mine to propose marriage to anyone—save once in my life, and that was a good many years ago.”
    Stacey could only stare at him in astonishment, and he crushed out the end of his cigarette, and lit another.
    “And I can’t help feeling that you need someone to look after you—badly.”
    “But—but you hardly know me,” she stammered.
    “That’s quite true,” he admitted. “And to you I am almost a complete stranger. But your father knew me years ago, and he instructed you to come to me when you were in need of some assistance, and although I did my best to help you you came over all independent and ran away—which was hardly wise of you. And now I don’t think you’re to be trusted on your own, and as a doctor can always make use of a wife”—smiling a little peculiarly—“and as a matter of fact she’s a social asset without which I’ve struggled along for several years now, ever since, i n fact, my first wife died ... ”
    “Oh!” she said, in amazement. “I didn’t know you’d been married!”
    His smile became a little one-sided.
    “You know very little about me, don’t you?” he murmured. “And the little you do know cannot be of much assistance in enabling you to make up your mind about your own future. But although I’m not making you any declaration of violent affection”—watching her to see how the color came and went in her cheeks, and she kept her eyes rigidly lowered to the tablecloth—“I do for some reason feel an extraordinary sense of responsibility where you are concerned—possibly because I was really fond of your father—and I would like to be sure that your future path in life runs as smoothly as possible, as he would, too. Therefore I made up my mind this afternoon, while you were still asleep, that I would ask you to marry me when you woke up.”
    There were very few people having tea around them, and they had the peaceful riverside garden almost to themselves. Stacey could hear birds uttering little languid cries as they passed overhead, and from the river there was the chug-chugging of a motor-boat as it sped upstream, and the slap-slapping of oars as someone manipulated a rowing boat. The afternoon light fell goldenly about them, and Dr. Guelder’s sleek black head was burnished by it as he leaned a little towards her across the table. The Irish greyness of his eyes was intent and watchful.
    “Of course,” he suggested, “you might feel that marriage to me is too great a price to pay for your security?”
    Stacey drew a deep breath. In all her life she had known but two men intimately, and one of those had been her father. The other, now farming in Kenya, had grown up in the house next door to her in Herefordshire, and although several years older than she was he had been her most constant companion in her early teen-age days. He had taught her to swim, and to fish; had ridden with her, and improved her backhand at tennis. And when he went away to the University she had missed him sorely. And she had missed him still more when he decided to join his uncle and take up farming in Kenya. But although he wrote to her and she wrote to him—occasionally—there was nothing about Dick Hatherleigh which had ever upset her thinking powers, or caused her heart to miss a beat because his glance rested upon her. His voice on the telephone had never affected her with a sensation of breathlessness; when he carelessly picked up her hand and held it for a few seconds, the action had never sent queer little shivery tremors speeding up and down her arm.
    But Martin Guelder, from the moment he had stood up to welcome her behind his large walnut desk in his Harley Street consulting room, and looked at her with his gravely searching eyes, had done all those things. Some explanation might be found in the fact that her father had had a kind of hero-worship for him, and that he had infected her with his enthusiasm, but in the days when her father had