'Pardon me,' she protested gravely. 'Upper parlour maids are always twenty-nine. But I deplore your tendency to digress.'
'Am I digressing? I'm so sorry. What were we talking about?'
Julia giggled. She did not know where the cab was going, and she certainly did not care. She was thoroughly enjoying herself.
'You were taking advantage of my vast experience in such matters to learn how a man proposes to an eligible widow of great personal attractions.'
'Your advice can't be very valuable, since you always refused the others.'
'I didn't indeed,' she replied promptly. 'I made a point of accepting them all.'
'That at all events is encouraging.'
'Of course you may do it in your own way if you choose. But I must have a proposal in due form.'
'My intelligence may be limited, but it seems to me that only four words are needed.' He counted them out deliberately on his fingers. 'Will--you--marry--me?'
'That is both clear and simple.' She pressed back the thumb which he had left untouched. 'I reply in one: no.'
He looked at her with every sign of astonishment.
'I beg your pardon?' he said.
'You heard quite correctly,' she smiled. 'The reply is in the negative.'
She resisted a mad, but inconvenient, temptation to dance a breakdown on the floor of the hansom.
'You're joking,' said Dick calmly. 'You're certainly joking.'
'I will be a sister to you.'
Dick reflected for a moment, and he rubbed his chin.
'The chance will never recur, you know,' he remarked.
'I will bear the threat that is implied in that with fortitude.'
He turned round and taking her hand, raised it to his lips.
'I thank you from the bottom of my heart,' he said earnestly.
This puzzled her.
'The man's mad,' she murmured to a constable who stood on the curb as they passed. 'The man's nothing short of a raving lunatic.'
'It is one of my most cherished convictions that a really nice woman is never so cruel as to marry a man she cares for. You have given me proof of esteem which I promise I will never forget.'
Mrs. Crowley could not help laughing.
'You're much too flippant to marry anybody, and you're perfectly odious into the bargain.'
'I will be a brother to you, Mrs. Crowley.'
He opened the trap and told the cabman to drive back to Victoria Street, but at Hyde Park Corner he suggested that Mrs. Crowley might drop him so that he could take a stroll in the park. When he got out and closed the doors behind him, Julia leaned forward.
'Would you like some letters of introduction before you go?' she said.
'What for?'
'It is evident that unless your soul is dead to all the finer feelings, you will seek to assuage your sorrow by shooting grizzlies in the Rocky Mountains. I thought a few letters to my friends in New York might be useful to you.'
'I'm sure that's very considerate of you, but I fancy it's scarcely the proper season. I was thinking of a week in Paris.'
'Then pray send me a dozen pairs of black suede gloves,' she retorted coolly. 'Sixes.'
'Is that your last word?' he asked lightly.
'Yes, why?'
'I thought you might mean six and a half.'
He lifted his hat and was gone.
XIX
A few days later, Lady Kelsey and Lucy having gone on the river, Julia Crowley went to Court Leys. When she came down to breakfast the day after her arrival, she found waiting for her six pairs of long suede gloves. She examined their size and their quality, smiled with amusement, and felt a little annoyed. She really had every intention of accepting Dick when he proposed to her, and she did not in the least know why she had refused him. The conversation had carried her away in her own despite. She loved a repartee and notwithstanding the consequences could never resist making any that occurred to her. It was very stupid of Dick to take her so seriously, and she was inclined to be cross with him. Of course he had only gone to Paris to tease, and in a week he would be back again. She knew that he was just as much in love with her as she was with him, and it was absurd of him to put on airs. She awaited the post each day impatiently, for she constantly expected a letter from him to say he was coming down to luncheon. She made up her mind about the
