"But now you know he does?" Ada persisted, kissing me coaxingly.
"Ah, but I don't know yet, Ada; so you will get no answer from me on that head. But, oh, Ada!" I exclaimed, suddenly. "What would Lady Desborough say? Oh, I do hope it is not true! What would she say to Percy falling in love with a country doctor's daughter?"
Ada did not look at all alarmed.
"My dear," she said, laughing, "I do not think you need trouble yourself on that score. Country doctors' daughters, in general, are not heiresses of twenty-five thousand pounds. Mamma is, no doubt, ambitious, and expects that I shall make a great match; and had Percy been like other people, and remained in the Guards, and stayed at home, I dare say she would have thought nothing under a duke's daughter good enough for him. As it is, all that is changed. She was very angry indeed with him about it, but she has given it up now. Here he is in a regiment which in a year or so will go on foreign service; he is mad enough to intend to go with it, and where is he then? You may be quite sure of one thing, Agnes. My mamma is a very excellent woman, but she knows far too much of human nature not to have weighed in her mind, and accepted the possibility of Percy's falling in love, before she invited a very pretty girl like you to spend a month in the house at a time she knew Percy would be at home on leave."
I had no reply ready to this argument of Ada's, which I knew enough of Lady Desborough to feel was true; so I kissed her, and told her that she had talked quite nonsense enough for one morning, and that it was quite time to get ready to go out.
The last three weeks I spent in Eaton Square were perhaps more happy than the previous time, but I don't think they were so pleasant; that is, I did not feel so much at home. Before, I had been with Percy as I might have been with a brother, or rather, perhaps, with a cousin; but now, to feel in my heart—as I now did feel—that he looked at me in quite another way, made me feel different, and at times a little awkward with him. Before, if Ada left the room for any thing, I continued to chat with Percy as unconcernedly as if she had been present; now, I made some excuse to accompany her, or, if obliged to remain, rattled on about anything that came uppermost, to prevent the conversation by any possibility taking a serious turn.
Ada told me one day that Percy had asked her the reason of my remaining away so; but I told her she had no one to blame but herself, who had made me uncomfortable by talking nonsense to me about him.
"But he is very much in earnest, Agnes. He spoke to me last night, and said he was only waiting for an opportunity of speaking to you. You won't say 'no,' will you, Agnes darling?"
She asked in her coaxing way, kissing me as she used to do at school when she wanted me to do anything for her.
I did not answer. I felt very very happy to know now for certain that he loved me, still, I could not answer that question except to himself, especially to Ada, who would be sure whatever she promised me, to tell Percy. So I said at last, "There is no use, Ada, in his speaking to me now at all. I would never accept him or any other man, even if I loved him with all my heart, until my father had seen and liked him."