“Adsum.”

“I’m really serious.”

“I never was less so.”

“I should not have become your wife if I had dreamed you would be such a brute!”

“You’ll please remember that I never asked you to marry me.”

She laughed deliciously over the insult, and after that I could not resist her.

“You have,” I said, “a bundle in your left hand, wrapped in tissue paper and tied with a blue ribbon, which you sedulously keep from my sight, but of which I caught a glimpse as you entered.”

“And you’ve known it all this time! Perhaps you know too what I want?”

“Last spring,” I answered, “I knocked at the door of your morning-room twice, and receiving no response, I went in, to find you reading something that you instantly hid from sight. There were on the lounge, I remember, a sheet of tissue paper and a blue ribbon. I suspect a connection.”

“Well?”