“Oh, I’ll marry, I’ll marry,” laughed the other, “but you must find me the girl.”
Love, however, did that, though the earl was assiduous, surrounding the young man for the betterment of his choice with half the eligible petticoats in the county; a mistake, seeing that iteration and propinquity in affairs of the heart are of more assistance than variety.
Yet it was, in the end, variety which succeeded, in the person of Miss Rosamond Merlin.
She had come to lend terpsichorean relief to an amateur performance of burlesque in the neighborhood, and her appearance transformed Veynes, in a single night, from a conscientious brigand to a distracted and distracting piece of stage furniture; though it is but fair to add he was not the only one affected; for none of his brother bandits were, when slain—while Miss Rosamond was upon the stage—as stiff as their previous rigidity had led one to expect.
Miss Merlin attended but three rehearsals; yet ere the night of the performance, Veynes had decided, as he put it, that they were made for one another—a phrase which has not, in a man’s mouth, all the reciprocity that it conveys. He offered the idea to Miss Rosamond while applying some powder to her cheek.
She laughed, knocked the puff out of his hand, and ran on to the stage; but she found him awaiting her exit, deaf to cues and stage directions, in a kind of tragic calm.
“I mean it,” he protested.
She widened her eyes.
“Well, mean it a little later,” she said.
He took the hint and waited till, having found her some food, they were sitting in the deserted supper room, in an atmosphere of exhausted hilarity, among the ruins of the waiters.