I could not be certain, owing to the firelight, that he blushed, but I chanced it. I didn’t object to these palpable attempts to marry me to Millicent Dixon; but it was disparaging to my intelligence that I should be supposed not to notice them. Anyway, the male element was a new feature in the alliance.
“And do you think that she and I would be a well-matched pair?” I asked.
He professed a hypocritical ignorance as to whom I meant. I laughed.
“Mrs. Loring,” I answered, “can give you points, Arthur. You would apparently marry me on general principles. She particularises.”
We were waiting for Caroline and Millicent. Millicent and Bassishaw were dining with us that evening, and Bassishaw had lately, I knew, been a good deal perturbed on my account. More than once he had timidly suggested that a woman’s hand in a place made all the difference, you know, and I had caught him glancing round my rooms with something of a disparaging valuation of their contents when he should take Caroline away. His friendly concern, in itself, was deserving of my gratitude—but with this qualification, that I don’t believe he was above suspecting that I should take to drink in the imminent solitude of my bereft apartments.
I was extracting from him the fervent declaration that I couldn’t imagine how splendid It—being engaged—made you feel, and that to know that there was One upon whom et-cetera et-cetera For Ever, when Millicent and Caroline entered. We rose to greet them.
“How do you do, Millicent?” I said. “I’m glad to see you.”
“Heaven!” she replied, “let me come near the fire. I’m as cold as a seminary breakfast. How do you do, Arthur? What a blessed blaze! Don’t go away, Arthur.”
Bassishaw had gone over to the table, where Caroline was making the last unnecessary arrangements, and was having his flower pinned on.
“Oh! his circulation’s all right,” I remarked. “We were once like that,” and Millicent, looking over her shoulder, laughed at me, and said: