She saw her slip and tried to correct it.
"I haven't said——" she began, but the sentence was never finished; for Harold Stanley Malcolm St. Hubart Scarsdale, of "The Towers," Sussex, closed the argument and the lips of Miss Mabel Vernon, of Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A., at one and the same time.
Robert Allingford, United States Consul at Christchurch, England, and Marion, youngest daughter of Sir Peter and Lady Steele, were seated on the balcony of the Hyde Park Club one hot afternoon. Everybody had gone down to the races at Goodwood, and the season was drawing its last gasp. The "Row," which they overlooked, was almost deserted, save for an occasional depressed brougham, while the stretches of the Park beyond were given over to nursemaids and their attendant "Tommies" and "Bobbies."
Mamma was there, of course. One must be conventional in London, even in July; but she was talking to the other man, Jack Carrington, who had been invited especially for that purpose, and was doing his duty nobly.
The afternoon tea had been cleared away, and the balcony was deserted. In another week Marion would go into the country, and he would return to his consulate. He might never have such another chance. Opportunities for a proposal are so rare in London that it does not do to miss them. A ball affords almost the only opening, and when one remembers the offers to which one has been a third party, on the other side of a thin paper screen—well, it makes a man cautious.
Robert Allingford had planned and worked up this tea with patience and success. Jack was to be best man, in consideration of his devotion to mamma—provided, of course, that the services of a best man should be required. On this point Allingford was doubtful. He was sure that Lady Steele understood; he knew that Sir Peter had smiled on him indulgently for the past fortnight; his friends chaffed him about it openly at dinners and at the club; but Marion—he was very far from certain if she comprehended the state of affairs in the slightest degree.
He had given her river-parties, box-parties, dinners, flowers, candy—in short, paid her every possible attention; but then she expected Americans to do so; it was "just their way," and "didn't mean anything."
He greatly feared that his proposal would be a shock to her, and English girls, he had been told, did not like shocks. He wondered if it would have been better to ask Lady Steele for her daughter's hand, but this he felt was beyond him. Proposing was bad enough anyway, but to attempt a declaration in cold blood—he simply couldn't. Moreover he felt that it must be now or never. Jack had been giving him the field for five minutes already, and he had not even made a beginning. He would go in and get it over.
"You are leaving town next week," he said. "I shall miss you."