"Yes," she replied. "The third of June, 1895."
"I say, you know," he said, "I think you might have married me once in a way, as I had asked you."
"Mr. Banborough," she replied stiffly, drawing herself up, "you forget yourself."
"I beg your pardon," he returned humbly. "Only as American divorce laws are so lax, I thought—"
"The divorce laws of my country are a disgrace, and nothing would ever induce me to avail myself of them. Besides, marriage, to me, is a very serious and solemn matter, and I can't permit you to speak about it flippantly, even by way of a joke."
Cecil picked up a handful of pebbles and began throwing them meditatively at the fragment of an adjacent arch. The more he saw of Miss Arminster, the greater mystery she became. By her own admission, she had been married at least half a dozen times, which, were he to accept as real the high moral standard which she always assumed, must imply a frightful mortality among her husbands. But then she neither seemed flippant nor shallow, and her serious attitude towards the sacrament of marriage appeared wholly incompatible with a matrimonial experience which might have caused a Mormon to shudder. Anyway, she wasn't going to marry him, and he turned to the discussion of more fruitful subjects.
"How's Spotts getting on with his studies in architecture?" he asked.
"I should think he'd learned a good deal," she replied. "Your father hasn't left a stone of his own cathedral unexplained, and I imagine he'll put him through his paces over this abbey."
"Poor Spotts! I'm afraid he's had a hard row to hoe," said Cecil; "but, anyway, it'll keep him out of mischief."
"You must be very careful what you say about him to me," she replied. "I won't hear one word against him, for we're very old friends."