On the other hand, little Rawsden had been cracking his joke about Hector, etc., to a Miss Sneef, a rather pretty young boarder, whom he honored by confiding to her his more successful sarcasms; and, when she imparted to him, next day, the news of Barrington's capitulation, he had the presence of mind to smile pallidly and look as if he had known all about it from an early period of his existence. Without changing his tone, he muttered, dryly: "Antony and Cleopatra!"
V.
The two parties most concerned said nothing about it to each other for days. But the interval was not unemployed. Mrs. Douce, having now discovered her niece's inclination (if she had not known it before), was allured by a calculation, based on the fact that Barrington had always managed to pay his bills, and on the hope that if Natalia were to become Mrs. Barrington two permanent paying boarders might be secured, with possibly, in time, a half price besides. "One of these days, after all," she said to Barrington, whom she took an early opportunity of seeing alone, "you will be going off and leaving me, I fear."
"Oh, no," said he; "I've really given up the war!"
"But there are other things than war."
"Other things to carry me away, do you mean? Or other disasters?"
"Well, not exactly disasters," said Mrs. Douce, hastily; "I mean marriage."
"You don't call that a disaster, then?" Barrington inquired, wickedly. "But what on earth has put this into your head?"
"It's much easier to get into my head than war. If you could think of such an unnatural thing as going to war, you might easily decide to marry," was the landlady's equivocal conclusion.
"What, I?" exclaimed Barrington, trying not to grow red, but doing so. "I see I've made you suspicious."