"There's a Mr. Talmadge in New York," she went on, wildly. "He said he would come to me from across the world, at a moment's notice, if I wired. Only it would be awkward if I announced our engagement to-night, and then found he'd changed his mind. Besides, he'd be a last resort: and Sayda Sabri said I ought—"
"Why not wire Sir Marcus?" I ventured. (If his telegram had not come yesterday, I would as soon have advised Cleopatra to adopt an asp.)
"Oh! well—I was thinking of it. That's one thing I wanted to ask your advice about. I believe he does love me."
"Idolizes is the word."
"And now and then in the night I've had a feeling, it was almost like wasting something Providential, to refuse a Marcus Antonius. Sayda Sabri warned me to wait for a man named Antony, whom I should meet in Egypt. That's why I—but no matter now. The 'Lark' is a dreadful obstacle, though. How could I live with a lark?"
"Lady Lark has quite a musical lilt."
"Do you think so? There's one thing, even if you're the wife of a marquis or an earl, you can only be called 'Lady' This or That. You might be anything. He's taller than Antoun—I mean, Captain Fenton. And his eyes are just as nice—in their way. They quite haunt me, since Philae. But Lord Ernest, he has some horrid, common little tricks! He scratches his hair when he's worried. If you look up his coat sleeves you catch glimpses of gray Jaeger, a thing I always felt I could never marry. And worst of all, when he finishes a meal and goes away from the table, he walks off eating!"
"I don't suppose," said I, "that your first Marcus Antonius ever went away from a table at all—on his feet; anyhow, while you were doing him so well in Egypt. He had to be carried. I call Sir Marcus (and I stole the Sirdar's epithet for the other Anthony) a Romantic Figure! His adoration for you is a—a sonnet. There's no 'h' in his name to bother you. And he fell in love at first sight, like a real sport—I mean, like the hero of a book. If he has ways you don't approve, you can cure them; redecorate and remodel him with the latest American improvements. Why, I believe he'd go so far as to give his Lark a tail if you asked him to spell it with an 'e'."
"Well—I suppose you're right about what I'd better do," she sighed. "A bird in the hand—oh, I'm not making a silly pun about a lark—is worth two in New York! Please tell every one you see I'm engaged to Sir Marcus, for he is my bird in the hand: and I'll send off a telegram the first thing to-morrow morning, for fear he hears the news that he's engaged to me, prematurely. Where is he—do you know?"
"By to-morrow he'll be at Meröe Camp," I said: But I did not add: "So shall we!"