‘Well, if you are making love to her,’ said I, ‘it might be as well to give her a hint that you’re not in earnest.’
‘Oh, but, confound it, I am!’ he cried. ‘I mean,’ he added, catching himself up, ‘I think her a doocidly charming girl, and the most delightful creature to flirt with that ever I met in my life; but if I go and tell her I’m engaged’——
‘Well?’
‘It would knock my association with her on the head. It is not as if Fanny were within reach of an early post. Even if I were disposed to break off my engagement with her, it must take me some months to do it. D’ye understand me?’
‘You mean, of course,’ said I, ‘that no letter can reach her under seven or eight months, unless, indeed, you conveyed one to her by a homeward-bound ship.’
‘Ay; but putting the homeward-bound ship aside, Fanny could not knew of my resolution—were it ever to come to that—until she received the letter I posted to her in India; therefore, I should have to consider myself engaged to her all that time.’
‘No doubt,’ said I, beginning to feel bored.
‘Miss Temple would take that view,’ said he, ‘and that’s why I don’t choose to tell her the truth.’
‘I don’t quite follow your logic,’ I exclaimed; ‘but no matter. It may be that you want too much in the way of sweethearts. But so far as your secret goes, you can trust me to hold my tongue. Possibly, I may admire Miss Temple as warmly as you do; see qualities in her superior even to her excellence as a mistress of postures; but I do not yet love her so passionately as not to wish to see her chastened a bit by the lesson she is likely to learn from your delight in her society.’
‘I don’t understand,’ he exclaimed, lazily knocking the ashes of his pipe out through the open porthole.