hought it seemed terrible to
get married; did not she? But she was shocked, and said no, marriage and
motherhood were sacred duties, and she envied her sister.

This kind of thing is not my idea of bliss. Two really well-behaved
children would be delicious, I think; but four squalling imps all about
the same age is _bourgeois_, and not the affair of a lady.

I suppose Lord Robert's answer cannot get here till about Saturday. I
wonder how he arranged it? It is clever of him. Lady Katherine said this
Mr. Campion who was coming is in the same regiment, the 3d Life Guards.
Perhaps when---- But there is no use my thinking about it, only somehow
I am feeling so much better to-night--gay, and as if I did not mind
being very poor--that I was obliged to tease Malcolm a little after
dinner. I _would_ play Patience, and never lifted my eyes from the
cards.

He kept trying to say things to me to get me to go to the piano, but I
pretended I did not notice. A palm stands at the corner of a high
Chippendale writing-bureau, and Jessie happened to have put the
Patience-table behind that rather, so the rest of them could not see
everything that was happening. Malcolm at last sat very near beside me,
and wanted to help with the aces--but I can't bear people being close to
me, so I upset the board, and he had to pick up all the cards on the
floor. Kirstie, for a wonder, played the piano then--a cake-walk--and
there was something in it that made me feel I wanted to move--to dance,
to undulate--I don't know what--and my shoulders swayed a little in time
to the music. Malcolm breathed quite as if he had a cold, and said,
right in my ear, in a fat voice:

"You know you are a devil--and I----"

I stopped him at once, and looked up for the first time, absolutely
shocked and surprised.

"Really, Mr. Montgomerie, I do not know what you mean," I said.

He began to fidget.

"Er--I mean--I mean--I awfully wish to kiss you."

"But I do not a bit wish to kiss you," I said, and I opened my eyes wide
at him.

He looked like a spiteful bantam, and fortunately at that moment Jessie
returned to the Patience, and he could not say any more.

Lady Katherine and Mrs. Mackintosh came into my room on the way up to
bed. She--Lady Katherine--wanted to show Mary how beautifully they had
had it done up; it used to be hers before she married. They looked all
round at the dead-daffodil-colored cretonne and things, and at last I
could see their eyes often