"Come, now, I wish you to remember. You understand that I am to be married to Richard Pennroyal tomorrow--to Richard Pennroyal!"
"Uncle Richard, dear Uncle Richard. I love Uncle Richard!"
"Do you love no one beside him? don't you love me?"
"Don't love you, oh, no!"
"Archie, have you forgotten how we were married in the back garden, and how you used to say I was your little wife; and you wanted to fight a duel with Richard because he had taken me on his knee and kissed me?"
"See how pretty!" exclaimed Archie, whose attention had been fixed during this speech upon two of the workmen who were unrolling between them a piece of crimson cloth appertaining to the hangings.
"What a creature!" muttered Kate to herself. To have her romantic souvenirs ignored even by this simpleton vexed her a little. Perhaps, too, she had another reason for regretting her companion's witlessness. She could remember when she had cared for him--or for something called him--more than she cared now for the man she would wed to-morrow. Why was he not the same now as then? His face, his hands, his figure--these were the same, or rather they were handsomer and more manlike than formerly. Why could not the soul, or whatever may be that mysterious invisible motive-power in a man--why could it not have stuck to its fortress during these seven years past? Here were five feet eleven of well-sculptured living clay, that had been growing and improving for more than one and twenty years; and for an inhabitant, nothing but a soft foolish child, destitute of memory, intelligence, and passion. Such reflections may have passed through the mind of the young heiress; and then she may have thought, glancing at him, "If my Archibald were here, to-morrow might see another spectacle than that put down in the programme." She might have thought this; she did not and of course would not on any account have uttered such a sentiment aloud. But it would be unjust to her taste and sensibility to suppose that, apart from worldly and politic considerations, she should have really preferred a sharp-featured, thin-haired, close-fisted gentleman of forty to a conceivable hero of half that age, dowered with every grace and beauty, not to mention Miss Tremount's seventy thousand pounds. Is she to be blamed if she sighed with a passing regret at that hero's mysterious disappearance? Yes, he had disappeared, more mysteriously and more irrevocably than old Sir Charles seventy years ago. Where in the heavens or the earth or under the earth, indeed, was he? Did he still exist anywhere? Might she dream of ever meeting him again--that hero?...! Bah! what nonsense!
"Pretty!" repeated Archie, who, in the subsidence of his other faculties, had retained an appreciation of color.
"Poor boy--poor thing!" said Kate; "you lost a great deal when you lost your wits; between being a groomsman and a bridegroom there is a very wide difference. And you don't even care--perhaps that's your greatest loss of all--ha, ha! Come, Archie, it's time for little fellows like you to be asleep."
"Kate--" began Archie; and paused.