"I hope so, for both your sakes," said Mrs. Belswin, bluntly; "and then there will be no more talk of breaking off the engagement."
"What, our engagement?" cried Maxwell, in an astonished tone, looking from the one to the other. "Why, what do you mean?"
"Ask Donna Quixota there, my dear Mr. Maxwell. She has been talking the high-flown nonsense which the virtuous heroine uses on the stage when she appeals to the gallery. She knows you love her for herself alone, and that I cannot live without her; yet she talks about leaving us both on some absurd scruple of honour."
"My dear Kaituna, you are surely not in earnest," said Archie, smoothing the girl's dark hair. "Mrs. Belswin is jesting, I suppose?"
"No! she is repeating my words in a slightly different way."
"But, Kaituna?"
"Now you are going to begin a discussion," said Mrs. Belswin, good-humouredly, "so I will leave you for a time. But first, Mr. Maxwell, tell me about your friend. You say he is going out to Melbourne?"
"Yes! I got a letter from him to-day. Miss Valpy and his father are both agreeable, and he starts by one of the Orient line in a fortnight."
"But the money?" said Mrs. Belswin, in some dismay, thinking of her straightened means. "What about the money?"
"Oh, that is all right," answered Maxwell in a satisfied tone. "Providence has tempered the financial wind to the Clendon lamb. He is going to write a series of articles on Australian cities for The Weekly Scorpion, so the benevolent editor of that paper pays his expenses."