"Was it Geraldine?"
"Of course it was Geraldine," he said, yawning.
"And will she marry you, Belle?"
"To be sure she will. I should like to see the woman that wouldn't," responded Belle, shutting his eyes and nestling down among the cushions. "And what's more, I've been fool enough to let her make me ask her. Give me some more sherry, Phil; a man wants support under such circumstances. The deuce if I'm not as hot as a ploughboy! It was very cruel of her to call a fellow out with the sun at the meridian; she might as well have chosen twilight. But, I say, you fellows, keep the secret, will you? she don't want her family to get wind of it, because they're bothering her to marry that old cove, Mount Trefoil, with his sixty years and his broad acres, and wouldn't let her take anybody else if they knew it; she's under age, you see."
"But how did she know you were L. C.?"
"Fairlie told her, and the dear little vain thing immediately thought it was an indirect proposal to herself, and answered it; of course I didn't undeceive her. She raffoles of me—it'll be almost too much of a good thing, I'm afraid. She's deuced prudish, too, much more than I should have thought she'd have been; but I vow she'd only let me kiss her hand, and that was gloved."
"I hate prudes," said Gower; "they've always much more devilry than the open-hearted ones. Videlicet—here's your young lady stiff enough only to give you her hand to kiss, and yet she'll lower herself to a clandestine correspondence and stolen interviews—a condescension I don't think I should admire in my wife."
"Love, my dear fellow, oversteps all—what d'ye call 'em?—boundaries," said Belle, languidly. "What a bore! I shall never be able to wear this coat again, it's so ingrained with dust; little puss, why didn't she wait till it was cooler?"
"Did you fix your marriage-day?" asked Tom, rather contemptuously.
"Yes, I was very weak!" sighed Belle; "but you see she's uncommonly pretty, and there's Mount Trefoil and lots of men, and, I fancy, that dangerous fellow Fairlie, after her; so we hurried matters. We've been making love to one another all these three months, you know, and fixed it so soon as Thursday week. Of course she blushed, and sighed, and put her handkerchief to her eyes, and all the rest of it, en règle; but she consented, and I'm to be sacrificed. But not a word about it, my dear fellows! The Vanes are to be kept in profoundest darkness, and, to lull suspicion, I'm not to go there scarcely at all until then, and when I do, she'll let me know when she will be out, and I'm to call on her mother then. She'll write to me, and put the letters in a hollow tree in the wood, where I'm to leave my answers, or, rather, send 'em; catch me going over that road again! Don't give me joy, old boys. I know I'm making a holocaust of myself, but deuce take me if I can help it—she is so deuced pretty!"