"I? I just reviewed the case calmly. I saw it was a great deal of money,—too much to hesitate about,—too much also to make it likely a man would dream of resigning it for the sake of a woman more or less. So I wrote to my cousin explaining that, as we had never known each other, there could be very little love lost between us, and that I saw no necessity why we ever should know each other,—and that I was quite willing to marry him, and take a third of the money, if he would allow me to be as little to him in the future as I was in the present, by drawing up a formal deed of separation, to be put in force at the church-door, or the door of any room where the marriage ceremony should be performed."
"Well?"
"Well, I don't know how it would have been but that, to aid my request, I inclosed a photograph of our parlormaid (one of the ugliest women it has ever been my misfortune to see), got up in her best black silk, minus the cap, and with a flaming gold chain round her neck,—you know the sort of thing,—and I never said who it was."
"Oh, Cecil, how could you?"
"How couldn't I? you mean. And, after all, my crime was of the passive order; I merely sent the picture, without saying anything. How could I help it if he mistook me for Mary Jane? Besides, I was fighting for dear life, and all is fair in love and war. I could not put up with the whims and caprices of a man to whom I was indifferent."
"Did you know he had whims and caprices?"
"Molly," says Lady Stafford, slowly, with a fine show of pity, "you are disgracefully young: cure yourself, my dear, as fast as ever you can, and as a first lesson take this to heart: if ever there was a mortal man born upon this earth without caprices it must have been in the year one, because no one that I have met knows anything about him."
"Well, for the matter of that," says Molly, laughing, "I don't suppose I should like a perfect man, even if I did chance to meet him. By all accounts they are stilted, disagreeable people, with a talent for making everybody else seem small. But go on with your story. What was his reply?"
"He agreed cordially to all my suggestions, named a very handsome sum as my portion, swore by all that was honorable he would never interfere with me in any way, was evidently ready to promise anything, and—sent me back my parlor-maid. Was not that insulting?"
"But when he came to marry you he must have seen you?"