“Look!” she suddenly exclaimed at last. “The boys are coming home! Can’t you see them there, down in the avenue?” and she pointed with her finger. “Well,” she added, “you’re not a bit entertaining, Wilfrid. You refuse to become my husband, so I suppose I shall have to marry someone else. The mater says I really must marry somebody.”
“Of course, you must,” I said. “But who is to be the happy man? Have you decided?”
“M’-well, I don’t quite know. Ellice Winsloe is a good fellow, and we’re very friendly,” she admitted. “The mater approves of him, because he’s well off.”
“Then she wouldn’t approve of me,” I laughed. “You know I haven’t got very much.”
“I’ve never asked her. Indeed, if you would marry me I shouldn’t ask her, I should marry first and ask afterwards.”
“But do you really mean to marry Ellice?” I asked seriously. “Is he—well, such a very particular friend?”
“He proposed to me a fortnight ago after the Jardines’ dance, and I refused him—I always refuse, you know,” and she smiled again.
She was as gay and merry as usual, yet there was about her face a look of strange anxiety that greatly puzzled me.
“Then you’ve had other offers?”
“Of course, but mostly from the undesirables. Oh! you would laugh if you could hear them laying open their hearts, as they call it,” she said gaily. “Why does a man call his love his secret—as though he’d committed some awful crime? It is most amusing, I can assure you. Mason and I have some good laughs over it very often.”