"I see," she whispered, "you don't understand. This is our secret: the world has nothing to do with it."
"I thought," answered Sir Percy, infatuated, but still retaining some of the vestiges of conventionality, "that marriages were quite public affairs. One has to get a license and be married in church."
"But this isn't being married," explained Lucy; "this is only being engaged."
Then the two looked at each other with adoring but uncomprehending eyes. Lucy's woman's wit, however, came to her rescue.
"I think," she said gravely, "that perhaps you know more about the ways of the world than I do, and, after all, there are other ways than those of Bardstown, Kentucky. So that it shall be as you wish."
She said this with such a pretty lowering of her long lashes, and so much deep feeling visible under her coquetry, that Sir Percy was more than ever charmed. Nor was the sound sense at the bottom of Lucy's remark lost upon him. A compromise was effected, by which Colonel and Mrs. Armytage were to be informed immediately, and the rest of the world was to remain in ignorance until within one month of the wedding day.
There was no suspicion among the others of the party concerning what had occurred, and least of all with Eleanor Chantrey and Stanley, both of whom might be said to have contingent interests in the matter.
The morning after Lucy's return she was awakened to receive a bouquet of roses and a letter from Sir Percy Carlyon. There was also a note for Colonel Armytage asking for a private interview. This precipitated matters.
"I should like to know," said Colonel Armytage, standing with his back to the fire in his own room, with Sir Percy's letter in one hand and The Congressional Record of the day before in the other, "what this means--'a private interview.'"
"Perhaps," ventured Mrs. Armytage, "he wants to ask you for a copy of your speech of yesterday. There is an editorial in the newspaper about it this morning."