“You see, I’m never so foolish as to forget that I’m long past forty.”
“I never think of your age,” he answered, and for the life of her she could not tell if he was in earnest. “To me you are a lovely woman, kind and witty and delightful.”
She looked at him calmly.
“What do you think Lionel would say if he heard you talk such rubbish?”
“Lionel is wisely occupied with his own affairs. I’ve sent him to propose to Gwendolen Durant. He was shy, but I told him it was the simplest thing in the world. I told him to look at her fan.” The Canon opened his partner’s and smiled into her eyes. “And that I told him would lead him naturally to take her hand.”
He audaciously seized Mrs. Fitzherbert’s, but she, with a laugh, withdrew it.
“I gather your meaning without your actually giving an example,” she said.
The Canon’s blue eyes sparkled with all the fire of youth. Another dance had begun and they were left alone in their alcove.
“Look here, why don’t you marry me?” he asked, suddenly.
Mrs. Fitzherbert was taken completely aback. It had never dawned on her that his bantering speeches could tend to any such end.