“I will go to Satan’s self to stop you chaffing this woman. Look how those people are laughing.”
Bertram calls the passing hansom and gets into it; Fanshawe follows him, and waves his hand to Mrs. Brown.
“You must come and dine with me at Richmond, Mrs. Socrates!”
Cicely and her cousin are sitting under a tree near the end of the Ladies’ Mile with some men standing before them and talking to them, when Marlow again approaches, diffident, but in ill-concealed triumph.
“Oh, Lady Jane,” he says eagerly, not venturing to address Cicely directly, “I’ve come back ’cos I’ve such a bit of news; am authorised to tell it; may put it in the Morning Post to-morrow. I’ve seen ‘the penny bunch of violets,’ and by all that’s awful, she’s a washerwoman’s daughter, and Bertram’s going to marry her. It’s Annieism you see, not Altruism.”
Much pleased with his own wit and humour he laughs gleefully, whilst his eyes are trying to read Cicely’s face; it gives no sign of any feeling or of having even heard what he has said.
“What nonsense you talk, Lord Marlow!” says Lady Jane. “Bertram may be silly, but he is not so utterly out of his mind as that.”
“Isn’t he? Why, he’s just told me the news himself! The young woman was with him down yonder. She sells flowers, and had got two skips full of primroses; and she’s not a good feature in her face. I’ll offer to be best man; shall I send ’em a set of saucepans or a sewing-machine?”
Cicely casts a look of supreme contempt upon him.
“The perfection to which you bring your jokes must have cost you a long apprenticeship on Bank Holidays, Lord Marlow.”