Is this all? Has he been admiring the furniture during all these eloquent moments of silence, instead of her and her innumerable charms? Insufferable!
"He do," responds she, dryly, with a careful adaptation of his English.
Sir Penthony raises his eyebrows in affected astonishment, and then they both laugh.
"I do hope you are not going to say rude things to me about last night," she says, still smiling.
"No. You may remember once before on a very similar occasion I told you I should never again scold you, for the simple reason that I considered it language thrown away. I was right, as the sequel proved. Besides, the extreme becomingness of your toilet altogether disarmed me. By the bye, when do you return to town?"
"Next week. And you?"
"I shall go—when you go. May I call on you there?"
"Indeed you may. I like you quite well enough," says her ladyship, with unsentimental and therefore most objectionable frankness, "to wish you for my friend."
"Why should we not be more than friends, Cecil?" says Stafford, going up to her and taking both her hands in a warm, affectionate clasp. "Just consider how we two are situated: you are bound to me forever, until death shall kindly step in to relieve you of me, and I am bound to you as closely. Why, then, should we not accept our position, and make our lives one?"
"You should have thought of all this before."