And then, nestling close to the one and only man in the world, she listened with complete satisfaction to his efforts to explain to her just how beautiful and wonderful and good she was.
[XXXIV]
When Lee and Renier, locked in each other's arms, stood in the forest primeval, they were mistaken in imagining themselves to be unobserved.
A short half-hour before, Mary Darling had received a proposal of marriage. But Mr. Sam Langham, usually so worldly-wise, had erred, perhaps, in his choice of time and place. Whatever a huge kitchen, bright with sunlight upon burnished copper, may be, it is not a romantic place. And, worse than this, Mary herself was not in a romantic mood. Certain supplies due by the morning express had not arrived. Chef was at the telephone shouting broken French to the butcher in Carrytown; one of the kitchen-maids had come down with an aching tooth, and the other had been sent upon an errand from which she should have long since returned.
"Oh," exclaimed Mary, as Mr. Langham entered, smiling, "everything is in such a mess! I don't believe there's going to be any lunch to-day for any one. And I think I shall have a nervous breakdown!"
"I told you you would long ago," said Langham, "if you didn't rest more and take things easier. What does it matter if things go wrong once in a while? And if there isn't going to be any lunch, I'm glad, for one. I was thinking of not eating mine, anyway. And if I'm not hungry, you can be pretty sure that nobody else is hungry. I tell you it hurts me to see you work so hard. I admire it and I bow down, but it hurts. You tell Chef to do the best he can, and you come for a brisk walk with me. We'll walk up an appetite, and——"
"I can't possibly," said Mary. "I've got to stand by."