en you must be mad!' Julia cried in great wrath. 'You can have no
other excuse, sir, for talking to me like that!'

'Excuse!' he cried rapturously. 'Your eyes are my excuse, your lips,
your shape! Whom would they not madden, ma'am? Whom would they not
charm--insanitate--intoxicate? What man of sensibility, seeing them at
an immeasurable distance, would not hasten to lay his homage at the feet
of so divine, so perfect a creature, whom even to see is to taste of
bliss! Deign, madam, to--Oh, I say, you don't mean to say you are really
of--offended?' Lord Almeric stuttered in amazement, again falling
lamentably from the standard of address which he had conned while his
man was shaving him. 'You--you--look here--'

'You must be mad!' Julia cried, her eyes flashing lightning on the
unhappy beau. 'If you do not leave me, I will call for some one to put
you out! How dare you insult me? If there were a bell I could reach--'

Lord Almeric stared in the utmost perplexity; and fallen from his high
horse, alighted on a kind of dignity. 'Madam,' he said with a little bow
and a strut, ''tis the first time an offer of marriage from one of my
family has been called an insult! And I don't understand it. Hang me! If
we have married fools, we have married high!'

It was Julia's turn to be overwhelmed with confusion. Having nothing
less in her mind than marriage, and least of all an offer of marriage
from such a person, she had set down all he had said to impudence and
her unguarded situation. Apprised of his meaning, she experienced a
degree of shame, and muttered that she had not understood; she craved
his pardon.

'Beauty asks and beauty has!' Lord Almeric answered, bowing and kissing
the tips of his fingers, his self-esteem perfectly restored.

Julia frowned. 'You cannot be in earnest,' she said.

'Never more in earnest in my life!' he replied. 'Say the word--say
you'll have me,' he continued, pressing his little hat to his breast and
gazing over it with melting looks, 'most adorable of your sex, and I'll
call up Pomeroy, I'll call up Tommy, the old woman, too, if you choose,
and tell 'em, tell 'em all.'

'I must be dreaming,' Julia murmured, gazing at him in a kind of
fascination.

'Then if to dream is to assent, dream on, fair love!' his lordship
spouted with a grand air. And then, 'Hang it! that's--that's rather
clever of me,' he continued. 'And I mean it too! Oh, depend upon it,
there's nothing that a man won't think of wh