"Older than you? What are you talking about? Miss Kinglake is young enough to be your daughter."
Another apple rolled on the floor. "Miss Kinglake!" she exclaimed in astonishment, "that lamb? Good Lord, I thought you were goin' to marry the other one!"
"Prudence," I said rather hotly, for I did not relish her amazement, "you will oblige me by not speaking of these ladies as the 'lamb' and 'the other one.' I might gather from your remarks that I am a sort of ravening wolf, instead of a well-meaning gentleman who is merely exercising the privilege of selecting a wife. But," I said, checking myself, for I was ashamed of my explosion, "I shall be magnanimous enough to believe that you are delighted with my choice, and that I have your congratulations. You will be glad to know that Miss Kinglake and I are perfectly satisfied with each other, and that we are both entirely satisfied with you. And now that we understand the situation, I think I may presume that we shall have breakfast at the usual hour this morning, and to-morrow morning, and for many mornings to come. And, by the way, Prudence, while I have honored you with my confidence, permit me to impress it upon you that this revelation is not village gossip as yet, and you will put me under further obligations by not mentioning the circumstance. Good-morning, Prudence. Kindly call the ladies at eight o'clock."
And thereupon I hastily departed, leaving the good woman in a state of stupefaction, since, for the first and only time in our long and controversial association, had I retired with the last word. Taking a second turn in the garden I encountered Malachy, and my conscience reproached me. "Am I doing right," I asked myself, "in withholding the glad news from this faithful servant who has shown himself so worthy of my confidence? Is it not my duty to tell him—not so much to interest him in his future mistress as to demonstrate the trust I repose in him?"
Malachy received my confidence with less excitement than I had expected. In fact I was slightly humiliated by his seeming lack of gratitude. He touched his hat very respectfully, and observed irrelevantly that the roses below the arbor were looking uncommonly well. This was a poor reward for my attempt at consideration, and further convinced me of the uselessness of establishing anything like intimate relations with the proletariat.
"By the way, Malachy," I said in parting, "you will keep this matter a profound secret. Miss Kinglake and I are desirous that we shall not be annoyed by village chatter and premature congratulations."
Having discharged my duty to my good servants, I felt that my obligations, so far as the relation with Phyllis was concerned, were at an end, and the morning wore away without further misgivings of disloyalty. In the afternoon Bunsey came over for his daily smoke, and as we sat together in the library, and I noticed the entire absence of suspicion in his manner, my heart smote me. "Truly," I reasoned silently, "I am behaving ill to an old friend who has never withheld from me the very secrets of his soul. Should I not be as generous, as outspoken, with him as he has always proved to me? Should I not confide to him this one precious secret, at the same time swearing him to preserve it as he would his life?"
I blew out a ring of smoke, and then I began with the utmost seriousness: "Bunsey, how do you like the ladies?"
He shifted his position, tipped the ashes from his cigar, and replied tranquilly: "Oh, I dare say I shall in time."
The answer vexed me. Bunsey was a bachelor, and should have been therefore the more impressionable. I forgot for the moment, in my annoyance, that he was a novelist, and had been so diligently creating lovely and impossible women to order that he was not easily moved by the realities of humanity.