“Only that the great Potiphar, the man of money, is completely hooked, and determined to embark upon the troubled sea of matrimony.”
“Is that bad news?” said her ladyship. “I call it a triumph of diplomacy, Arturo. Spoils from the enemy!”
“Then you are satisfied?”
“More than satisfied, my clever diplomat, and you shall have your reward.”
“When?”
Lady Littletown snipped here and snipped there, treating some of her choicest flowers in a way that would have maddened her head gardener had he seen, for unfaded flowers dropped here and there beneath the stands in a way that showed her ladyship to be highly excited.
“Now look here, Arturo,” she exclaimed at last, as she turned upon him, and seemed to menace him with her sharp-pointed scissors, which poked and snipped at him till a bystander might have imagined that Lady Littletown took him for a flower whose head gave her offence—“Now look here, Arturo, do you want to make me angry?”
“No: indeed no,” he cried deprecatingly.
“Then why do you ask me such a question as that?”
“Well,” he said, smiling, “is it not reasonable that I should feel impatient?”