"What harm can a simple rose do?"
"If you are going to look at it in that light, I shall say no more. But in a very little time you will find she has married you, and then where will you be?"
Her jealousy is too childishly open to be misunderstood. Mr. Desmond's spirits are rising with marvellous rapidity; indeed, for the past two minutes he feels as if he is treading on air.
"As you won't have me, I don't much care where I shall be," he says with the mean hope of reducing her to submission by a threat. In this hope he is doomed to be disappointed, as she meets his base insinuation with an unlowered front.
"Very good, go and marry her," she says, calmly, as if church, parson, and Miss Fitzgerald are all waiting for him, in anxious expectation, round the corner.
"No, I shan't," says Desmond, changing his tactics without a blush. "Catch me at it! As you persist in refusing me, I shall never marry, but remain a bachelor forever, for your sweet sake."
"Then say you will not bring those roses to-morrow. Or, better still, say you will bring them, and"—all women, even the best are cruel—"give them to me before her."
"My darling! what an unreasonable thing to ask me!"
"Oh! I daresay! when people don't love people they always think everything they do unreasonable."
This rather involved sentence seems to cut Mr. Desmond to the heart.