"I should like to, because of my aunt. I should indeed. If it were possible, without compromising myself, I should like her to be told some morning that I had gone off with the curate."
"How can you be so wicked, Violet!"
"It would serve her right, and her countenance would be so awfully comic. Mind, if it is ever to come off, I must be there to see it. I know what she would say as well as possible. She would turn to poor Gussy. 'Augusta,' she would say, 'I always expected it. I always did.' Then I should come out and curtsey to her, and say so prettily, 'Dear aunt, it was only our little joke.' That's my line. But for you,—you, if you planned it, would go off to-morrow with Lucifer himself if you liked him."
"But failing Lucifer, I shall probably be very humdrum."
"You don't mean that there is anything settled, Laura?"
"There is nothing settled,—or any beginning of anything that ever can be settled, But I am not talking about myself. He has told me that if you will accept him, he will do anything that you and I may ask him."
"Yes;—he will promise."
"Did you ever know him to break his word?"
"I know nothing about him, my dear. How should I?"
"Do not pretend to be ignorant and meek, Violet. You do know him,—much better than most girls know the men they marry. You have known him, more or less intimately, all your life."