‘You have half-performed my task for me. Do you think a lady, handsome, rich, and well-bred, and still comparatively young, would consent to unite her fortunes with mine? I am some ten or a dozen years her senior. I have been a bachelor all my life, and may have thus acquired peculiar ways. But I would settle the whole of my cousin’s legacy upon her, if she would take pity on my solitary state. Dear Fanny, can you not guess, without thought-reading, the name of my enslaver?’
The widow looked down and managed to blush becomingly, and impart a slight tremor to the hand which still held that of Septimus.
‘I will not affect to misunderstand you, Mr Redgrave; you are making my unworthy self an offer of marriage.’
‘And you accept it?’
‘I do.’
Septimus sealed the contract by a chaste kiss on the cheek of the widow, and felt a sensation of inexpressible relief that the Rubicon, for good or evil, was passed.
‘I may now tell you, dear Septimus, that Blanche is also engaged.’
‘I know it.’
‘Impossible! I only knew it myself forty-eight hours ago!’
‘Do not ask me at present, dear Fanny. I learned the fact by an accident.’