Meekly, with a treacherously innocent air, the girl surveyed him. “You wouldn’t wish me to take leaps in the dark, would you?”
“Certainly I would. Certainly I do—since you are to take them with me.”
With the same wicked look, Aurelia moistened her lips. “What a beautiful nature you have!”
Pleased at this, the little lord nodded.
“I’ll tell you what matrimony is, two souls with but a single thought——”
“Yes,” Aurelia interrupted. “Two souls with half a thought apiece.” Rapturously she sighed. “There is real bliss!”
Buttercups snarled. “Oh come, now! If you turn everything into ridicule——”
Dreamily Aurelia continued. “I asked the duchess, and she said——”
“The old harridan!”
“You know her manner”—a manner which Aurelia instantly made her own. “My dear, matrimony is three months of adoration, three months of introspection, thirty years of toleration—with the children to begin it all over.”