Hannah Sedge stood in the middle of that library. "What is your name?" she said.
"I beg your pardon?"
"Your Christian name. You have offered to marry me, and I do not know it, and I am not going to make a decision like this about a title."
"Nicholas."
"Then I am going to ask you four questions, Nicholas Ware," said Hannah Sedge, "and I want plain answers, and then I shall tell you what I think. The first is: are you asking me to nurse you?"
"No. There is a man for that, and there will be more of them, and it is not going to be your business unless you want it to be. And I want to say that plainly, because I think you have got a picture in your head of the next three years, and I would like to correct part of it."
"Second: if I say no this minute in this room, what happens to me?"
Nicholas Ware looked at her. "You get a bed for as long as you want it, a character from me that would get you a place in any house in England, and enough money to get to it." He said, "That is not a bargaining position, and it is not conditional on anything, and I should have said it before I said the other thing, and I am aware that I did not."
"Then why did you not?"