Marjorie breathed a sigh of relief at the timely interruption.
"Do you really think so?" asked Mrs. Shippen, with no attempt to conceal her impatience.
"Unquestionably.
'Smiles from reason flow,
To brute denied, and are of love the food.'
So sang the bard, and so sing I of His Excellency."
"But his age! He cannot now be thinking of matrimony."
"Age, my dear Mrs. Shippen, is a matter of feeling, not of years. The greatest miracle of love is to eradicate all disparity. Before it age, rank, lineage, distinction dissolve like the slowly fading light of the sun at eventide. The General is bent on conquest; that I'll wager. What say you, Major? A five pound note?"
"Not I. 'Old men are twice children,' you know."