Tom and Sunday become engaged

Tom and Sunday become engaged in the aftermath of the attack that nearly cost Sunday her life. The proposal follows her police statement and Tom’s return to her bedside, where he confirms that his earlier offer of marriage was sincere. Sunday asks him to repeat it, and accepts when he does. The scene makes their commitment explicit at a moment when Daisy Branning’s death and Sunday’s injuries remain painfully present.

Circumstances and Immediate Aftermath

The engagement takes place in the room where Sunday is recovering. Before Tom returns, Zillah has told Sunday that the police are there and would like to speak with her. Sunday nods weakly, and Zillah leaves quietly; Sunday then gives the police her statement, recounting what she can remember. The sequence places her account of the attack immediately before the private conversation with Tom: she has begun to put the events into words, but she is still physically vulnerable and dependent on others’ care.

Tom comes back after the police have left. He takes Sunday’s hand and kisses each of her fingers in turn, a careful gesture that contrasts with the pain still shooting through her body when she nods. She tells him that he saved her life and asks how he found her. Tom explains that learning Albert Pinnegar was dead led him to suspect Miss Frost; a policeman’s report that she had been sleeping rough in derelict pit cottages on the way to Bedworth helped point him toward her. The rescue and the engagement are not the same event, but the rescue forms their immediate context: Tom has returned to Sunday after finding her in danger, and his tenderness is expressed through touch before either of them speaks about marriage.

Daisy’s Death and the Proposal

Sunday tells Tom that Miss Frost killed Daisy Branning as well as Albert Pinnegar. Tom’s eyes fill with tears. He says that the police already knew the man they had arrested had not killed Pinnegar: someone had seen Miss Frost running from Pinnegar’s cottage with a knife, and the wrongly suspected man had been released. Tom had known Miss Frost was implicated in Pinnegar’s death, but had not realized that she had killed his sister. His grief briefly holds the conversation in place; he falls silent, then says they must try to put what happened behind them and remember Daisy as she had been before.

Only after this exchange does Tom raise his earlier proposal. He tells Sunday awkwardly that when he previously asked her to marry him, he meant it. Sunday’s response is an invitation rather than a simple answer: she asks him to ask again. That request gives the proposal a deliberate second form. Tom blinks in surprise, drops to one knee beside the bed, and asks Sunday Small to become his wife, declaring that he loves her more than life itself. Sunday accepts. Their exchange makes explicit what his earlier question had left uncertain: the proposal was not a passing expression, and she is willing to marry him.

The Meaning of the Scene

The scene moves through sharply different kinds of vulnerability. Sunday is still in pain, and the conversation begins with her recognition that Tom’s arrival saved her life. Yet the proposal is not presented as a substitute for the facts they have just faced. Daisy’s murder remains known, Tom’s grief is visible, and the police investigation has not vanished from the room’s immediate history. The couple’s decision to marry therefore comes amid unresolved loss rather than after it has been neatly settled.

The small actions carry much of the change. Tom kisses Sunday’s fingers, pauses when she names Daisy’s death, and then kneels beside her bed. Sunday, though weak, directs the renewed proposal by asking him to repeat it. The movement from his awkward confirmation to her invitation and his formal question gives her an active part in the commitment. The scene shifts from rescue, in which Tom found and saved her, to a mutual decision that Sunday openly accepts.

Aftermath

Two days later, Sunday is well enough to come downstairs and sit in the drawing room, where the household fusses over her. She jokes to Biddy Spooner that she could get used to the attention, and Biddy laughs. The recovery is a concrete change from the weakness and pain of the bedside scene, though it does not erase what has happened. Biddy then asks whether Sunday has thought further about what Zillah told her concerning Lady Huntley. Since the night of the disclosure no one has dared mention it, but Biddy now feels the subject must be faced. The engagement thus falls within a wider moment of transition: Sunday has accepted marriage while questions about her identity and Lady Huntley remain to be addressed.