“And you didn’t fetch my prayer-book, after all?” she inquired reprovingly. “You are a devoted squire of dames, I must say!”
“It was of my devotion to the fair in general and to you in particular that I came back to speak,” he began, unable, in spite of his firm resolution, to approach the subject except with his usual air of audacious impertinence and frivolity. “You must have observed that I bestow my society upon you in a way that causes half the beauties of the gay world of which I am so conspicuous an ornament fairly to die of jealousy. Well, my dear Mrs. March, I do so because you are the only woman who does not bore me too much. Point by point as our acquaintance grew I came to feel that you are as free from disqualifying features as any woman can be—in short, you know, I’ve almost made up my mind to think fairly well of you.”
Then followed an interview the like of which it is safe to say has never been heard before or since. In substance and seriousness it was the same as Travers’s, for Allyne, too, had been suddenly made independent by Fair’s investment of a small sum intrusted to him, but it was, on the surface, only a remarkable example of his characteristic nonsensical raillery and light chaffing. That the result was the same as it had been in Travers’s case may be inferred from the fact that when he left her with a painful effort at nonchalance he turned and came back to her to say:
“Tell me just one thing. It’s not that grave-digger, Dick Travers, is it?”
Mrs. March jumped at the immense relief of being able to laugh at this fling, and fairly shouted: “No—horrors!”
“Thank heaven for that!” returned Allyne. “Now I sha’n’t have to commit suicide.”
With one of his inimitable grimaces, he hurried into the house and she did not see the solitary tear that trickled down his cheek when he shut himself into his room and threw a pillow at his image in the mirror, crying: “You old fool!”
Mrs. March stood where he had left her, and her sense of humor mercifully prevented her dwelling on the unhappy side of the situation. And it was not until years afterward, when all three could bear to speak of it, that she related to both of them what had occurred.
“Truly Englishmen bear off the palm,” she mused after the first shock had passed. “All other men lay their hearts at a woman’s feet—but an Englishman condescends to let her know that he doesn’t mind allowing her to use his name if she has a mind to do so! Well, Baggs, was he there?”
Her last words were addressed to her maid, who had been watching for an opportunity to approach her mistress for some minutes.