"To prevent you offering me any more suitors," says Mary Browne, steadily, but with a rising blush, "I may as well tell you that I am engaged to be married."
"Good gracious, my dear! then why didn't you say so before?" says Madam, sitting bolt upright and letting her pince-nez fall unheeded into her lap.
"I really don't know; but I daresay because you took it for granted I wasn't."
"Mary," says Mrs. Herrick, speaking for the first time, and for the first time, too, calling Miss Browne by her Christian name, "tell us all about it."
"Yes, do," says Monica, and all the women draw their chairs instinctively a degree closer to the heroine of the hour, and betray in her a warm interest. After all, what can equal a really good love-affair?
"Go on, my dear," says Madam O'Connor, who is always full of life where romance is concerned. "I hope it is a good marriage."
"The best in the world, for me," says Mary Browne, simply, "though he hasn't a penny in the world but what he earns."
As she makes this awful confession, she isn't in the least confused, but smiles brightly.
"Well, Mary, I must say I wouldn't have believed it of you," says Madam.
"I would," says Monica, hastily laying her hand on one of Mary's. "It is just like her. After all, what has money got to do with it? Is he nice, Mary?"