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"And what is her name?" asked the lady. "Maria Dolores what?" "My detective didn't discover her Pagan name," said John. "So that you are still in doubt whether she's the daughter of a miller?" Lady Blanchemain raised her eyebrows. "Oh, no: I think she's a miller's daughter safely enough," said he. "But she's an elaborately chiselled and highly polished one.
"I should deceive you," answered John, "if I said he made me an unsuitable one. He makes me, to put it in round numbers, exactly no allowance whatsoever." "The old curmudgeon!" cried Lady Blanchemain, astounded, and fiercely scanning her words. "No," returned John, soothingly, "he isn't a curmudgeon. But he's a very peculiar man. He's a Spartan, and he lacks imagination.
"Ah," said John, sadly, and with perhaps mock humility. "If he had plenty of money, he'd never consent to his daughter marrying a son of poverty like me." "Pooh! For a title?" cried Lady Blanchemain. "Besides, you have prospects. Isn't your name Prospero?" "I have precious little faith in oracles," said John. "I advise you to have more," said Lady Blanchemain, with a smile that seemed occult.
"'Tis the spirit of a rose, distilled and crystallized," said Lady Blanchemain. "'Tis a drop of liquid light," said John. "But why do you give it to me? I can't wear it. I don't think I ought to accept it." "Nobody asks you to wear it," said Lady Blanchemain. "It's a woman's ring, of course. But as for accepting it, you need have no scruples.
It's an old Blanchemain gem, that was in the family a hundred years before I came into it. It's properly an heirloom, and you're the heir. I give it to you for a purpose. Should you ever become engaged, I desire you to placcit upon the finger of the adventurous woman."
When the first stress of their emotion had in some degree spent itself Lady Blanchemain, returning to her place on the ottoman, bade John sit down beside her. "Now," she said, genially imperative, whilst all manner of kindly and admiring interest shone in her face, "there are exactly nine million and ninety-nine questions that you'll be obliged to answer before I've done with you.
There was reproach in her voice, I'm not sure there wasn't disappointment. "No," said he, "it was the exact and literal truth. But I have come into a modest competency over-night." "I don't understand," said she. "My own part in the story is a sufficiently inglorious one," said he. "I'm the benefactee. Lady Blanchemain and my uncle have put their heads together, and endowed me.
No, my uncle isn't a curmudgeon; he's a very fine old boy, of whom I'm immensely proud, and though I've yet to see the colour of his money, we're quite the best of friends. At any rate, you'll agree that it would be the deuce to pay if I were to fall in love. "Ffff," breathed Lady Blanchemain, fanning. "What did I say of an age of prose and prudence? Yet you don't look cold-blooded.
But accident threw us together for a minute or two this afternoon, and we could scarcely do less, in civility, than exchange the time of day." "And are you in love with her?" asked Lady Blanchemain. "I wonder," said he. "What do you think? Is it possible for a man to be in love with a woman he's seen only half a dozen times all told, and spoken with never longer than a minute or two at a stretch?"
"I adore," he said, "our light and airy British way of tarring Americans and Australians with the same brush, the descendants of transported convicts and the descendants of the Pilgrim Fathers!" "Is your Winthorpe man a descendant of the Pilgrim Fathers?" asked Lady Blanchemain, dryly. "Indeed he is," said John.
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