"Not true?" he asked incredulously.
She gave him a glance that answered him far more clearly than words. He started toward her impulsively.
"Dolores!—it can't be!"
She avoided him, in an attempt to delay the inevitable surrender.
"Ware danger, your earlship!" she mocked. "I warn you I'm a designing female. How do you know it's not the coronet I'm after?"
"Dearest!" he exclaimed, and this time he succeeded in capturing the hand that she flung out to fend him off.
"Wait—wait!" she protested. "This is most—ah—indecorous. Think how shocked mamma would be. You haven't even declared your intentions."
"My intentions," he stated, "are to do—this!" He boldly placed his arm about her shoulders, and bent down over her back-tilted head. "My dear Miss Gantry, I have the honor of saluting—the future Countess of Avondale!"
Instead of shrinking—from him, as he half feared, she slipped an arm up about his neck.
With a blissful sigh, she drew back from the kiss, to answer him in a tone of tender mockery: "The Right Honorable the Earl of Avondale is informed that his—ah—salute is received with pleasure."