She drew an audible breath. “Then—will you marry me at once?” she asked.
Now, what the devil’s the meaning of this? thought Mr. Beaumaris, startled. Can that damned young cub have been getting up to more mischief since I left town?
“At once?” he repeated, voice and countenance quite impassive.
“Yes!” said Arabella desperately. “You must know that I have the greatest dislike of—of all formality, and—and the nonsense that always accompanies the announcement of an engagement! I—I should wish to be married very quietly—in fact, in the strictest secrecy—and before anyone has guessed—that I have accepted your very obliging offer!”
The wretched youth must have been deeper under the hatches than I guessed, thought Mr. Beaumaris, and still she dare not tell me the truth! Does she really mean to carry out this outrageous suggestion, or does she only think that she means it? A virtuous man would undoubtedly, at this juncture, disclose that there is not the smallest need for these measures. What very unamusing lives virtuous men must lead!
“You may think it odd of me, but I have always thought it would be so very romantic to elope!” pronounced Papa’s daughter defiantly.
Mr. Beaumaris, whose besetting sin was thought by many to be his exquisite enjoyment of the ridiculous, turned a deaf ear to the promptings of his better self, and replied instantly, “How right you are! I wonder I should not have thought of an elopement myself! The announcement of the engagement of two such notable figures as ourselves must provoke a degree of comment and congratulation which would not be at all to our taste!”
“Exactly so!” nodded Arabella, relieved to find that he saw the matter in so reasonable a light.
“Consider, too, the chagrin of such as Horace Epworth!” said Mr. Beaumaris, growing momently more enamoured of the scheme. “You would be driven to distraction by their ravings.”
“Well, I do think I might be,” said Arabella.