"Don't you think," she said, "that you might occasionally, for the sake of variety, wait until his own inclination prompted him to come?"
"I don't understand you," said Mrs. Keeley, absently. "I asked him because I wanted to make final arrangements with him about Lady Suffolk's drawing-room meeting, at which he has promised to speak to-morrow."
"It seems to me," observed Marion sarcastically, "that it would save a lot of trouble if you were to marry him yourself."
"It is very surprising," complained her mother, "how you persist in dragging the frivolous element into everything. If you were only like your cousin, now,—so earnest and so sympathetic! How is it that you are really my daughter?"
"I'm sure I don't know; in fact, I think it is the only subject on which you have allowed me to remain ignorant," returned Marion, calmly. "But you needn't bother about me; I am going out to dinner in any case to-night, so you will be able to make your arrangements with Paul without the distraction of the frivolous element. Meanwhile, can't we have some tea?"
The Honourable Mrs. Keeley returned to her circulars with a sigh.
"One might almost think, to hear you talk, that you did not want to marry him at all," she exclaimed.
"One almost might," assented Marion; and she tore her letter into little pieces, and threw them deftly into the waste-paper basket. Her mother looked at her a little apprehensively.
"How you can, even in fun, pretend to ignore the merits of a character like Paul Wilton's is beyond my comprehension," she grumbled. "What more can you want in a man, I should like to know?"
"More? I don't want any more; I want a good deal less. I'm not ignoring his merits; I only wish I could. I would give anything to find a few honest human imperfections in him. It is his eternal excellence that is driving me to distraction. What a fool I was ever to let him take me seriously! Of course I never should have done, if he had not provoked me by being so difficult to fascinate. He is one of those awful people who are going to make heaven unbearable!"