“Yes, once.”
“I often think how curious it is,” went on Sir Eustace in a reflective tone, “to watch the various changes time brings about, especially where the affections are concerned. One sees children at the seaside making little mounds of sand, and they think, if they are very young children, that they will find them there to-morrow. But they reckon without their tide. To-morrow the sands will have swept as level as ever, and the little boys will have to begin again. It is like that with our youthful love affairs, is it not? The tide of time comes up and sweeps them away, fortunately for ourselves. Now in your case, for instance, it is, I think, a happy thing for both of you that your sandhouse did not last. Is it not?”
Madeline sighed softly. “Yes, I suppose so,” she answered.
Bottles, behind the curtains, rapidly reviewed the past, and came to a different conclusion.
“Well, that is all done with,” said Sir Eustace cheerfully.
Madeline did not contradict him; she did not see her way to doing so just at present.
Then came a pause.
“Madeline,” said Sir Eustace presently, in a changed voice, “I have something to say to you.”
“Indeed, Sir Eustace,” she answered, lifting her eyebrows again in her note of interrogation manner, “what is it?”
“It is this, Madeline—I want to ask you to be my wife.”