"And you?" he asks, turning with an accent of playfulness toward me.

"Not yet," I answer, laughing, "and most likely I shall have to answer
'not yet' to that question as often as it is put to me till the end of
the chapter."

"Why so?"

I shrug my shoulders.

"In moments of depression it strikes Barbara and me, that me and Tou Tou
shall end by being three old cats together."

"Are you so anxious to be married?" he asks with an air of wonder, "in
such a hurry to leave so happy a home?"

"Every one knows best where his own shoe pinches," I answer
vernacularly. "I am afraid that it does not sound very lady-like, but
since you ask me the question, I _am_ rather anxious. Barbara is not:
_I_ am."

A shade of I cannot exactly say what emotion--it _looks_ like
disappointment, but surely it cannot be that--passes across the sunshine
of his face.

"All my plans hinge on my marrying," I continue, feeling drawn, I do not
know how or why, into confidential communication to this almost total
stranger, "and what is more, on my marrying a rich man."

"And what are your plans?" he asks, with an air of benevolent interest,