"No; you have certainly not made me an offer, and till you do that, of course I can't refuse you."
"Then, of course, I can tell my father that you have not refused me; and if I were further to hint to him that you are hardly prepared to marry just yet, that you would prefer to wait, say, a year or eighteen months longer, would that be a very wide departure from the truth?"
"It would be no departure from the truth so far as I am concerned. I certainly am not prepared to take to myself a husband for a long time to come."
"You know I can continue to look in here once or twice a week as usual; and perhaps you wouldn't mind my being seen with you in the Row, now and then, or at the opera, or the theatre?"
"Not at all. Come with me as often as you like. I have very few engagements."
"And if your Aunt Percival or Lady Loughton should hint anything to you 'about our supposed engagement, could you not give them to understand that you and I are on excellent terms with each other, and that the less they interfere in the matter the better?"
"I certainly could do all that, although the doing of it would involve a certain amount of deception on my part."
"But deception that can harm nobody. If these worthy old souls would only leave you and me to look after our own happiness, there would be no occasion for subterfuge of any kind."
"Then, under cover of all this, you intend to carry on your flirtation with the doctor's daughter?"
"It's no flirtation, Cis, but a real downright serious case of spoons. I've promised to marry her, and I shall do so in spite of everything. If I can only keep my father in the dark till I'm five-and-twenty, then all will come right, and with your help, Cis, I shall be able to do that without much difficulty."