Miss Douglas never came to dinner after all, and Daisy, too, was absent. Mrs. Lushington, outwardly deploring the want of a "young man" for the "Gordon girls," inwardly puzzled her brains to account for the joint desertion of her principal performers, a frightful suspicion crossing her mind that she might have been too vigorous in her measures, and so frightened Satanella into carrying Daisy off with her, nolens volens, once for all. She had short notes of excuse, indeed, from both; but with these she was by no means satisfied: the lady pleading headache, the gentleman a pre-engagement, since called to mind—this might mean anything. But if they had gone away together, she thought, never would she meddle in such matters again!
Not till dinner was over, and Bessie Gordon had sat down to sing plaintive ballads in the drawing-room, did she feel reassured; but the last post brought a few lines from the General in fulfilment of his pledge to let her know how his wooing had sped.
"Congratulate me," he wrote, "my dear Mrs. Lushington, on having taken your advice. You were right about procrastination" (the General loved a long word, and was indeed somewhat pompous when he put pen to paper). "I am convinced that but for your kind counsels I should hardly have done justice to myself or the lady for whom I entertain so deep and lasting a regard. I feel I may now venture to hope time will do much—constant devotion more. At some future period, not far distant, it may be my pride to present to you your beautiful young charge in a new character, as the wife of your obliged and sincere friend—V. St. Josephs."
"V. St. Josephs?" repeated Mrs. Lushington. "I wonder what V. stands for. Valentine, if I remember right. And I wonder what on earth he means me to gather from his letter! I cannot make head or tail of it. If she has accepted him, what makes him talk about time and devotion? If she has refused him, surely he never can intend to persevere! Blanche, Blanche! if you're playing a double game, it will be the worse for you, and I'll never trust a woman with dark eyes again!"
The Gordon girls, going home in their hired brougham, voted that "dear Mrs. Lushington had one of her headaches; that Mr. L. was delightful; that after all, it seemed very selfish of Clara not to have secured them a couple of men; finally, that they had spent a stupid evening, and would be too glad to go to bed!"
All details of love-making are probably much alike, nor is there great room for variety in the putting of that direct question, to which the path of courtship necessarily conducts its dupe. General St. Josephs kept no copy of the letter in which he solicited Miss Douglas to become his wife. That lady tore it immediately into shreds, that went fluttering up the chimney. Doubtless it was sincere and dignified, even if diffuse; worthy, too, of a more elaborate answer than the single line she scribbled in reply:—
"Come and talk it over. I am at home till seven."
His courage rose, however, now he had got fairly into action, and never had he felt less nervous while dismounting at the well-known door, than on this supreme occasion, when he was to learn his fate, as he believed, once for all, from the lips of the woman he loved.
Like most men trained in the school of danger, strong excitement strung his nerves and cleared his vision, he no longer averted his eyes from the face that heretofore so dazzled them; on the contrary, entering the presence of Miss Douglas, he took in her form and features at a glance, as a man scans the figure of an adversary, while he prepares for attack.