"That, my dear, you can never be. You carry brimstone enough to set every one in flames about you. But to return to our—sheep. Don't say, Kate, I am expected to range alongside such a figure-head as that!"
"She will have a very valuable consignment of—timber, however, when she comes into Forest Hill."
"Which adjoins 'The Towers!' The Avuncular will be death on it! What an unfortunate idea to take up!"
"Can't you do it?" asked the girl, looking askance.
"I don't want to offend his Lordship. I'd ride for a fall. Any chance of a refusal, Kate?"
"That wouldn't satisfy him. He thinks a man ought never to be beat; and that
'It isn't so much the gallant who woos
As the gallant's way of wooing.'
But I do hope, Harry, you won't have to marry Geraldine. Fancy her mistress of 'The Towers!'—no go!—no fun! and she would collect the stupidest people in the county."
"What a brilliant little chatelaine some one else would make!" quoth wicked Harry.
A glance—one of Kate's own—which few men could stand and feel perfectly cool. With all her flirtations,—and at present she was most in love with Colonel Dashwood,—she never forgot that if bereaved of their uncle by an opportune fit of the gout, few better matches could fall in her way than cousin Harry; so that a little quiet love-making with him was a useful investment in view of such a contingency; though, of course, she could not wait, if this dear uncle, as, indeed, was sadly probable, lived on indefinitely with Harry's future still unassured.