“If you will be so generous as to regard it as such.”
The young lady stopped in her promenade, and leaned back against the rail, looking me squarely in the face. Then she laughed with greater heartiness than I had yet heard her do.
“This is most interesting,” she said at last, “and really most amazing. Why, you must have known me for nearly two hours! I assure you I did not lend you a helping hand out of the Slough of Despond to imprison you at once in the Castle Despair of a penniless marriage. Besides, I always thought a proposal came after a long and somewhat sentimental camaraderie, which goes under the name of courtship. However, this explains what I have so often marvelled at in the English papers; a phrase that struck me as strange and unusual: ‘A marriage has been arranged and will take place between So-and-So and So-and-So.’ Such a proposal as you have just made is surely an arrangement rather than a love affair. Indeed, you have said nothing about love at all, and so probably such a passion does not enter into the amalgamation. If you were not so serious I should have thought you were laughing at me.”
“On the contrary, madam, I am very much in earnest, and it is you who are laughing at me.”
“Don’t you think I’ve a very good right to do so? Why, we are hardly even acquainted, and I have no idea what your Christian name is, as I suppose you have no idea what mine is.”
“Oh, Hilda, I know your name perfectly!”
“I see you do, and make use of it as well, which certainly advances us another step. But the other half of my proposition is true, and I remain in ignorance of yours.”
“When unconsciously I went through the ceremony of christening, I believe my godfathers and godmothers presented me with the name of Rupert.”
“What a long time you take in the telling of it. Wasn’t there a Prince Rupert once? It seems to me I’ve heard the phrase ‘the Rupert of debate,’ and the Rupert of this, and the Rupert of that, so he seems to be a very dashing fellow.”