"Bah! do you think, because we are virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?"
"Of course I do. I could sketch your future so easily. It will be so intensely respectable. You will become a model country squire. You will hunt a good deal, but never ride any more. (You must sell the Axeine, you know.) You will go to magistrates' meetings regularly, and breed immense cattle; and you will grow very fat yourself. That's the worst of all. I don't like to fancy you stout and unwieldy, like Athelstan."
She ended, pensively. The languor of reaction seemed stealing over her, but it only made her more charming as she leaned still farther back on the soft cushions, watching the point of her tiny foot tracing the pattern of the carpet.
"What a brilliant horoscope!" said Guy; "and so benevolently sketched, too! Now your own, Improvisatrice."
"I shall marry too," she answered, gravely. "I ought to have done so long ago. Perhaps I shall make up my mind soon. Evil examples are so contagious."
"And who will draw the great prize?"
"I have not the faintest idea. I suppose some fine old English gentleman, who has a great estate."
"I only hope the said estate will be near Kerton," Livingstone suggested; and he drew closer to his companion.
"Ah! dear old Kerton," she said, sighing again, "I shall never go there any more."
"The reason?"