"Why—why does the Duke follow me?" she asked weakly.
"It was his special wish," explained the other. "He said his voice would serve to emphasize the sweetness of your singing and coming, as it would, immediately after your song—these are his own words—his feeble efforts would bring the audience to a——"
"Oh yes," she interrupted impatiently, "I can well imagine all that he said, and I'm thoroughly decided that the programme must be rearranged."
In the end she had her way.
For some reason she omitted to convey to her mother the gist of the conversation. If the truth must be told, she had already regretted having spoken of the matter at all to her family, for her mother's letter to the Tanneurs had brought to her a greater infliction than her impetuous suitor. Whatever opinion might be held of the genius of Hal Tanneur at Hydeholm, in the expressive language of the 9th's mess, he was "no flier." The girl had learnt of his coming with dismay, and the gleam of hope that perhaps after all, he might be able to effectively snub the young man of the step ladder, was quickly extinguished as the result of the brief skirmish she had witnessed. And Hal was attentive in his heavy way, and had tricks of elephantine gallantry that caused her more annoyance than alarm.
On the evening of the day she had seen the vicar, Mr. Hal Tanneur decided upon making a diplomatic offer, so set about with reservations and contingencies, that it was somewhat in the nature of a familiar stock exchange transaction. In other words he set himself the task of securing an option on her hand, with the understanding that in the event of his father's refusal to endorse the contract, the option was to be secretly renewed for an indefinite period. He did not put the matter in so few words as I, because he was not such a clever juggler of words as I am, but after he had been talking, with innumerable "d'ye see what I mean Alic's" and "of course you understand's," she got a dim idea of what he was driving at. She let him go on. "Of course the governor's got pots of money, and I don't want to get in his bad books. Just now he's a bit worried over some Nevada property he's trying to do a chap out of—in quite a business-like way of course. The other chap—the chap who has the property now has got a big flaw in his title and he doesn't know it. See? Well, unless he renews his claim and gets some kind of an order from the court, or something of that sort, the governor and the governor's friends can throw him out, d'ye see what I mean?"
"I really don't see what this is to do with me," said Alicia frankly bored, "you said you wanted to tell me something of the greatest importance, and I really ought to be seeing about mother's supper."
"Wait a bit," he pleaded, "this is where the whole thing comes in: if the governor pulls this deal off, he'll be as pleased as Punch, and I can say out plump and plain how I feel about you."
It was on the tip of her tongue to inform him that "plump and plain" was ludicrously descriptive of himself, but she forbore. Instead she plunged him into a state of embarrassed incoherence by demanding coolly—
"Do I understand, Hal, that you have been proposing to me?"