Farewell, Nikola | Page 8

you know, I have set my heart upon that coming to something. No! you needn't shake your head. For very many reasons it would be a most desirable match."
"For my own part I believe it was for no other reason that you bothered me into inviting him to join our party here. You are a matchmaker. I challenge you to refute the accusation."
"I shall not attempt to do so," she retorted with considerable hauteur. "It is always a waste of time to argue with you. At any rate you must agree with me that Gertrude would make an ideal duchess."
"So you have travelled as far as that, have you?" I inquired. "I must say that you jump to conclusions very quickly. Because Glenbarth happens to have said in confidence to me (a confidence I am willing to admit I have shamefully abused) that he considers Gertrude Trevor a very charming girl, it does not follow that he has the very slightest intention of asking her to be his wife. Why should he?"
"Lords," she answered, as if that ought to clinch the argument. "Fancy a man posing as one of our hereditary legislators who doesn't know how to seize such a golden opportunity. As a good churchwoman I pray for the nobility every Sunday morning; and if not knowing where to look for the best wife in the world may be taken as a weakness and it undoubtedly is, then all I can say is, that they require all the praying for they can get!"
"But I should like to know, how is he going to marry the best wife in the world?" I asked.
"By asking her," she retorted. "He doesn't surely suppose she is going to ask him?"
"If he values his life he'd better not do that!" I said savagely. "He will have to answer for it to me if he does!"
"Ah," she answered, her lips curling. "I thought as much. You are jealous of him. You don't want him to ask her because you fancy that if he does your reign will be over. A nice admission for a married man, I must say!"
"I presume you mean because I refuse to allow him to flirt with my wife?"
"I mean nothing of the kind, and you know it. How dare you say, Dick, that I flirt with the Duke?"
"Because you have confessed it," I answered with a grin of triumph, for I had got her cornered at last. "Did you not say, only a moment ago, that if he did not know where to find the best wife in the world he was unfit to sit in the House of Lords? Did you not say that he ought to be ashamed of himself if he did not ask her to be his wife? Answer that, my lady."
"I admit that I did say it; but you know very well that I referred to Gertrude Trevor!"
"Gertrude Trevor is not yet a wife. The best wife in the world is beside me now; and since you are already proved to be in the wrong you must perforce pay the penalty."
She was in the act of doing so when Gertrude entered the room.
"Oh, dear," she began, hesitating in pretended consternation, "is there never to be an end of it?"
"An end of what?" demanded my wife with some little asperity, for she does not like her little endearments to be witnessed by other people.
"Of this billing and cooing," the other replied. "You two insane creatures have been married more than four years, and yet a third person can never enter the room without finding you love-making. I declare it upsets all one's theories of marriage. One of my most cherished ideas was that this sort of thing ceased with the honeymoon, and that the couple invariably lead a cat-and-dog life for the remainder of their existence."
"So they do," my wife answered unblushingly "And what can you expect when one is a great silly creature who will not learn to jump away and be looking innocently out of the window when he hears the handle turned? Never marry, Gertrude. Mark my words: you will repent it if you do!"
"Well, for ingratitude and cool impudence, that surpasses everything!" I said in astonishment. "Why, you audacious creature, not more than five minutes ago you were inviting me to co-operate in the noble task of finding a husband for Miss Trevor!"
"Richard, how can you stand there and say such things?" she ejaculated. "Gertrude, my dear, I insist that you come away at once. I don't know what he will say next."
Miss Trevor laughed.
"I like to hear you two squabbling," she said. "Please go on, it amuses me!"
"Yes, I will certainly go on," I returned. "Perhaps you heard her declare that she fears what I may say next. Of course she