I suppose there is a reason for everything in this world. Still, the spectacle of a good man fighting dumbly with a cruel disappointment—and disappointment is perhaps the bitterest pill in all the pharmacopeia of life—is certainly a severe test of one's convictions on the subject.
At this moment the rest of the party—minus Dolly—flowed out on to the doorstep to say farewell; and two minutes later Captain Dermott drove heavily away—back to his day's work.
Well, thank God there is always that!
"I thought she was going to take him," said Kitty in her subsequent summing-up. "It was far and away the best offer she has ever had. And he is such a dear, too! What does the child want, I wonder! A coronet?"
"'A dinner of herbs,' perhaps," said I.
Kitty eyed me thoughtfully, and gave a wise little nod.
"Yes—Dolly is just that sort," she agreed. "But what makes you think that?"
"Oh—nothing," I said.
There are certain matters upon which it is almost an impertinence for a man to offer an opinion to a woman, and I rather shrank from rushing in where my wife had evidently not thought it worth while to tread. Still, I could not help wondering in my heart whether the arrival of one gentleman on Sunday may not sometimes have something to do, however indirectly, with the abrupt departure of another gentleman on Monday.