Dog Trust by Bernard Capes — Read

There was no reason why Richard Le Shore should not have made a straightforward appeal for the hand of Miss Molly Tregarthen to her papa. His credentials-of fortune, condition, and character-were unexceptionable; the girl's kind inclinations were confessed; the father himself was an unexacting, indulgent, and ease-loving Democritus. It was but a question of those two and of Mr. Dicky, their favoured, their intimately favoured, guest.

There was no reason, and for the reason that the spirit of Romance abhors reason; and that was why, without any reason, Richard persuaded Mollinda to a clandestine engagement, to stolen interviews, to a belief that love franked by authority was only the skim-milk of human kindness. At least he chose to persuade himself that he persuaded her, at all times when he could coax a certain bewildered honesty in her eyes from dumbly questioning the necessity of such tactics. In reality he loved that look, as the sweetest earnest of a sweet quality. It was not her he studied to deceive, but himself. Incurably eligible, he could never taste but through make-believe, like the "Marchioness," the sweet stimulant of paternal interdiction.