“Don’t interrupt; you know you are very proud of his scalp, though you would not be a duchess. Is not his proposal kept among our family archives to this day?”
“Geoffrey! only I am so sleepy I would box your ears. Meanwhile, permit me to remind you of one word—the mystic word, wait!”
“Fancy, descending from a duke to a baronet! I am a deeply injured man. Only for your nonsense I might have been quoting ‘My cousin, the duchess.’ You would have made such a sweet little nurse. I daresay you would have been spoon-feeding the dear old fellow by this time, whereas, thanks to your heartless conduct, he has been hurried to an early grave.”
“How foolish of you not to have accepted him, Alice,” put in Mary, with lazy interest.
“Was she not? Miss Fane did all she could to make her; but she only cried and sobbed, and made no end of scenes; so she had to get her own way. You always do get your own way, don’t you, Lady Fairfax?”
But all this was thrown away on Alice, who was leaning back in her corner apparently fast asleep.
“Only we had to go in our war-paint, it was a very pleasant ball, wasn’t it, Rex? I’m nearly smothered in this tunic. I suppose you, as my senior officer, would not hear of my taking it off, would you?”
“No,” replied Reginald, with a yawn; “suppose you follow the general example and go to sleep. I’ll excuse that if you like.”
A very weary, drowsy party ascended the shallow steps of Monkswood, as the stars were disappearing and giving place to the gray dawn. With yawns and candles they all dispersed, leaden-footed, to their own apartments, to seek tired nature’s soft restorer, sleep.
But there was little sleep for Sir Reginald, nor had he any apparent inclination to woo the fickle goddess, as he paced his long, low-roofed bedchamber from end to end.