Ethel lay back in a low, lounging chair with a big ostrich feather
fan in her hand, and she looked up expectantly into her lover's face.
There was nothing else for it, and he took the plunge valiantly--and
with precisely the correct amount of maidenly hesitancy, Lady Ethel
named a day for their marriage. And then--somehow there seemed
nothing more to be said; each sat silent.

Sir John felt rather than saw his companion yawn behind her fan, and
realised desperately that he must break the silence.

"Ethel," he said gently; "I am old compared with yourself, and grave
and sad even beyond my years; are you sure I can make your future
happy?"

She looked at him with a good deal of surprise, and a frown puckered
her smooth brow.

"Why not? Why should we wish for rhapsodies and commonplace
love-making? We can leave all that to the Chloes and Daphnes of a
by-gone age. It would be boring to the last degree. One must take
pleasure just as much as sorrow, with a certain amount of equanimity.
If there is one thing more than another that I hate, it is to be
ruffled. Emotion of any sort ages a girl so terribly."

The sword would never wear out the scabbard so far as Lady Ethel was
concerned! He doubted if she were capable of any great depth of
feeling. But he did not say now as he would have done a week ago--"So
much the better;" he no longer felt that it was altogether desirable.

He looked at her more scrutinisingly than he had ever done before,