"Don't be brutal, Brenda! I know you don't mean it, and it isn't like you. Now, listen. Before he went to Egypt this time Lord Leighton asked me to marry him. I said 'No,' and for two reasons. I knew that he liked me very much—he always has done—and poor Dad took his liking for love and encouraged him: but I'm a woman and, I know, that liking isn't love—and then I love some one else. And now he, I mean Lord Leighton—loves some one else. Turn your face to the moon. Yes, you know who the some one else is. I'm so glad, for I do think you——"
"Niti, you're talking arrant nonsense for an educated young woman. I've only known His Lordship for a day, and how can you——"
"Because female Bachelors of Science and graduates of Vassar, whatever stupid people may say, have hearts as well as intellects, dear, and so they know. I seem to have had a kind of sixth sense given to me to-day, and, when you met Lord Leighton, I saw it, and I believe you felt it. I saw your eyes brighten and your face flush—only a little, but it did, and so did his. You know my belief in the Doctrine. You may have been lovers—perhaps wedded lovers—once upon a time, as they say in the fairy tales."
"How awful—no, I mean how wonderful—if it could only be true! And now, as you've told me all this, you might as well tell me who your some one else is."
"Really, Brenda, I thought you had more perception. He's there on the verandah smoking with your Lord Leighton."
"Oh! Then, of course, you're going to marry him?"
"I'm sorry to say Dad doesn't want me to. With all his genius and learning he is a perfect child in that sort of thing. He has no idea of Natural Selection. Now listen again, Brenda.. When I had to tell Mark that Dad wouldn't let me marry him, he picked me up out of a chair in the verandah there, where your father and mine are sitting, and kissed me three times."
"And I'll gamble ten cents that you kissed him back. That's Natural Selection, if I know anything about it. Niti, if that man—and he is a man—doesn't get killed in a fight, he'll marry you in spite of all the misguided scientific Dads on earth. Don't you worry. You've made me just happy. I'm not emotional that way, but I'd like to kiss you if the moon wasn't so bright. Suppose we go back and try to assist the kindly Fates a little bit?"
The Fates which, in some dimly-perceived fashion, seem to shape our little successive phases of existence, were certainly in a kindly mood that "lovely night in June." The two Professors had retired to Franklin Marmion's sanctum for the discussion of whisky and soda and the possibilities of physical manifestations of the Occult. Mrs van Huysman was frankly and comfortably sleeping in the deep, amply-cushioned armchair, and the two young men were almost as frankly pining for sweeter companionship than their own.
But the pairing off, which was so deftly managed by Nitocris, did not at first appear entirely satisfactory to them, yet a very few minutes' conversation sufficed to convince them of the wisdom of the arrangement. Brenda, with all the delicate tact which makes every highly-trained woman a skilled diplomatist, managed, not only to completely charm Merrill as a man who is in love with another woman likes to be charmed, but also to make him understand even more clearly than he had done how greatly the Fates had blessed him by giving him the love of such a girl as Nitocris; and then, by a few very deftly conveyed suggestions, she further gave him to understand that, so far as Lord Leighton had ever been an unconscious obstacle in his path, he was even now engaged in removing himself. Wherefore Commander Merrill enjoyed his smoke and stroll under the beeches a good deal more than he had anticipated.