Anyhow, there's one danger removed from the path. And now I think I see clearly enough what must come. Miss Million, having found that she's been deceived in smooth talk and charming flattery and Celtic love-making, will turn to the sincerity of that bomb-dropping American cousin of hers.
They'll marry—oh, yes; they'll marry without another hitch in the course of the affair. And I——Yes, of course, I shall marry, too. I shall marry that other honest and sincere young man—the English one—Mr. Reginald Brace.
But I must see Million—Miss Million—married first. I must dress her for her wedding. I must arrange the veil over her glossy little dark head; I must order her bouquet of white heather and lilies; I must be her bridesmaid, or one of them, even if she does have a dozen other girls from the "Refuge" as well!
And who'll give her away? Mr. Chesterton, the old lawyer, will, I suppose, take the part of the bride's father.
Miss Vi Vassity is sure to make some joke about being the bride's mother. She is sure to be the life and soul of that wedding-party—wherever it is. It's sure to be a delightfully gay affair, the wedding of Nellie Million to her cousin, Hiram P. Jessop! I'm looking forward to it most awfully——
These were the thoughts with which I was harmlessly and unsuspectingly amusing myself as Miss Million and I walked along down the white Sussex highroad in the golden evening light.
And in the middle of this maiden meditation, in the middle of the peaceful evening and the drowsy landscape of rose-wreathed cottages and distant downs, there dropped, as if from one of Mr. Jessop's machines, a positive bomb!
The unexpected happened once more. The unexpected took the form, this time, of an unobtrusive-looking man on a bicycle.
When we met him, slipping along on the road coming from the direction of Miss Vi Vassity's "Refuge," I really hardly noticed that we had passed a cyclist.
Miss Million, apparently, had noticed; she straightened her back with a funny little jerky gesture that she has when she means to be very dignified. She turned to me and said: "Well! He'll know us next time he sees us, that's one thing! He didn't half give us a look!"