“Then you are satisfied?”
“But you had no right to come,” I weakly said.
“That has nothing to do with it. Are you satisfied?”
“Yes,” I had to reply.
“Then,” he continued, “remember that my bond is waste paper when we land in a few minutes, and the proposals I have made before, I shall repeat on terra firma.”
Six weeks later we were engaged, and six weeks later still I married one of the handsomest men in London.
When I was first engaged it was a constant subject of interest to my friends that the man should have such an extraordinary name as Alec. In 1887 no one in England had apparently ever heard the name of Alec. He was the fifth generation bearing the name himself, but outside that family the abbreviation does not appear to have penetrated.
Times change, and twenty years later the name had become so well known that I had the honour and felicity of seeing it on a music-hall programme, and placarded for a music-hall artist.