“Look here, Miss Glyn,” he began abruptly, “I’m no good at beating about the bush.”
Letty glanced up at him interrogatively. She was sitting in the window, knitting golf stockings for her uncle.
“You can bet it’s not to see your aunt I’ve been coming over here, eh? It’s to see you!”
Letty looked down: her fingers were shaking visibly.
“I am older than you, and all that sort of thing,” he continued airily; “but I’m not a bad sort, as my sister can tell you, and I want to know if you will marry me. Come now, don’t turn away like that, if it’s going to be ‘yes.’ Give me your hand.”
Suddenly she heard her aunt’s voice in the hall; it sounded unusually sharp, and dictatorial, and in a panic of terror, Letty extended a cold, limp little hand, on which Blagdon instantly imprinted a lingering, and burning kiss.
Then the door-handle turned noisily to admit Mrs. Fenchurch, and her newly pledged niece rose hastily to her feet, and all but ran out of the room.
Dorothy Fenchurch sat late that night, writing her great news on her best crested paper, to all her most important correspondents. She and Hugo, as she now called him, had had a talk: the wedding could take place soon—there was really nothing to wait for. Tom Fenchurch was, of course, brought into the consultation: he had lately begun to think that Blagdon was not such a bad sort, and that Letty might make something of him, after all—though down in his heart he did not approve of the match; but who could withstand Dorothy? Now, as he took part in and listened to this discussion, his contribution consisted of the words, repeated over and over again:
“Too young, too young; the child is too young; much too young.” But it was as the voice of one crying in a wilderness, Tom Fenchurch was in the minority, the vote for an early wedding was easily carried, and a notice to The Morning Post to that effect, clinched the business.
Telegrams and letters poured in upon clever Mrs. Fen: congratulating her upon this, her most glorious achievement; not only was she the best housekeeper, the best gardener, the best judge of old furniture in the land, she had now crowned all her successes by marrying her niece to the greatest parti in the County!