"It's a dismal old barrack," Mr. Darcy said, trying to laugh; "but you two girls needn't look like ghosts about it. If the sun was shining now, I dare say you would be laughing at its grimness, both of you."
"I don't know," said the heiress, "I cannot conceive this place anything but ghostly and gloomy. I should be afraid of that murdered woman or that drowned girl coming out from under those black trees in the dead of night. I shall never like Redmon."
"Oh, pooh!" said Mr. Darcy, "yes, you will. When the sun is shining and the grass is green, and the birds singing in these old trees, you'll sing a different tune, Miss Olive. We'll have a villa here, and this old rookery out of the way, and fine doings up here, and, after a while, a wedding, with Laura here, for bridesmaid, and myself to give you away. Won't we, Laura?"
"I'm sure I don't know, sir. Who do you want to give her away to?"
"Well, I'm not certain. There's Tom Oaks looney about her; and there's that good-looking Englishman, all you girls are dying for. You like soldiers, don't you, Miss Olive?"
"Not particularly. Especially soldiers who never smell powder except on parade-day, and whose only battles are sham ones. I like those poor fellows who are fighting and dying down South, but carpet-knights I don't greatly affect.
"That's a rap over the head, Mr. Darcy," cried Laura, with sparkling eyes. "I wish he heard you, Miss Henderson."
"He might if he liked," said the heiress, scornfully.
"Well," said the lawyer, taking the "rap" good-humoredly, "he can make whom he marries, 'my lady,' some day. Is not that an inducement, my dear?"
"Is he of the nobility, then?" asked Olive Henderson, indifferently, and not replying to the question.