"He turned and looked at me here," writes Dolly, and said--

"'But your feminine instinct is chafing against all this laborious weighing of pros and cons. In your own mind you summed up the situation ten minutes ago. I am--"impossible." Isn't that it?'

"My _dear_, I nearly _screamed_, for of course that is just what was in my mind. But I couldn't very well say so, so I just sat there and looked rather idiotic and he went on--

"'In other words, I am not quite a gentleman.'

"Then I said quite suddenly--

"'Robin, whatever else you may be, you _are_ a gentleman.'

"He got quite pink. 'Thank you,' he said. 'But for all that, I am too rough a suitor for such a polished little aristocrat as yourself.'

(Rather cheek, that! After all, Dilly, we're five feet seven.) 'We live in an artificial sort of world; and a man, in order not to jar on those around him, requires certain social accomplishments. I have few--at present. You have taught me a great deal, but I should still rather discredit you as a husband. My want of polish would 'affront'

you, as we say in Scotland. I am a better beater than shot; I can break a horse better than I can ride it; and I dance a reel better than I waltz. I have strength, but no grace; ability, but no distinction. Of course, if you and I really loved each other--you being of Type Two--none of these things would matter. But for all that, it would hurt you to see people smiling at your husband's little _gaucheries_, wouldn't it?'

"I didn't answer, and he got up and went and leaned against the mantelpiece.

"'Listen,' he said, 'and I will tell you what I have decided to do. I have made up my mind not to have a try for you--badly though I want it--till I consider that I have reached your standard. I fixed that standard myself, so it is a very, very high one, I have been schooling myself and shaping myself to attain it ever since I met you. But I have not quite reached it yet, and therefore I have nothing to ask of you now.'"

"Then what on earth have you brought me here for?" inquired Dolly, feeling vaguely aggrieved.

Robin surveyed her rather wistfully, and then smiled in a disarming fashion.

"That was weakness," he said, "sheer weakness. But I think it was pardonable. I saw, now that your sister was married, that the days of your old irresponsible flirtations were over, and that you would henceforth regard proposals of marriage as much more serious things than hitherto. Consequently you might marry any day, without ever knowing that a little later on you would have received an offer from me. I have brought you here, then, to tell you that I am a prospective candidate, but that I do not feel qualified to put down my name at present. Ideally speaking, I ought to have kept silence until the moment when I considered that I was ready for you; but--well, there are limits to self-repression, and I have allowed myself this one little outbreak. All I ask, then, is that in considering other offers you will bear somewhere in the back of your mind the remembrance that you will, if you desire it, one day have the refusal of me. I admit that the possibility of your being influenced by the recollection is very remote, but I am going to leave nothing undone that _can_ be done to get you."

"By this time," Dolly continues elegantly, "I was getting considerably flummoxed. The whole business was very absurd and uncomfortable, but I couldn't help feeling rather complimented at the way he evidently regarded me--as a sort of little tin goddess on a pedestal out of reach, being asked to be so good as to stand still a moment while Robin went to hunt for the steps--and I also felt a little bit afraid of him. He was so quiet and determined over it all. He seemed to have it all mapped out in a kind of time-table inside him. However, I pulled myself together and decided to contribute my share to the conversation. I hadn't had much of a look in, so far.

"So I settled down to talk to him like a mother. I began by saying that I was very much obliged and honoured, and all that, but that he had better put the idea out of his head once and for all. I liked him very much, and had always regarded him as a great friend, quite one of the family--you know the sort of stuff--but----

"It was no good. He held up his hand like a policeman at a crossing, and said--

"'Please say nothing. I have asked you no question of any kind, so no answer is required. All that I have said to-night has been in the nature of an _intimation_.' (O-h! how like church!)

"Then he sat down on the sofa beside me, very gently, and said--

"'The intimation in brief is this. I love you; and some day, please God, I shall ask you to marry me. But not until I feel that you would lose nothing by doing so.'

"We both sat very still for a few minutes after that. I fancy we were both doing a little thinking. My chief reflection was that Robin had had rather the better of the interview, because he had made me listen to him when I was determined not to. Suddenly Robin said--

"'Now that the business part of this conversation is over, I am going to allow myself a luxury. I have been talking most of the time about myself. For just five minutes I shall talk about you. I will tell you what I think of you.'

"He looked at his watch and began. Dilly, I had no idea I had so many good points! He put them better than any man has ever done before. But then the other men were always so jumbled up, and this creature was as cool and collected as if he were reading a Stores Catalogue.

"But he let himself go at last. It was my fault, though. I was in rather a twitter by this time, for although the whole thing was simply absurd--of course one couldn't marry a wild untamed creature like that, _could_ one, Dilly?--I couldn't help seeing what a man he was, and feeling sorry that things couldn't have been a bit different, if only for his sake. So I gave him my hand" [I can see her do it] "and said: 'Poor old Robin!'

"He _seized_ it--my child, it has waggled like a blanc-mange ever since!--and kissed it. Then, quite suddenly, he broke out into a sort of rhapsody-like _'The Song of Solomon,'_ only nicer--with his head bowed over my hands. (He had got hold of the other one too, by this time.) I felt perfectly helpless, so I let him run on. I shan't tell you what he said, dear, because it wouldn't be cricket. Anyhow, a perfectly idiotic tear suddenly rolled down my nose--after all, I had had a _fearfully_ long day--and I tried to pull my hands away. Robin let them go at once.

"'You are right. The time for such things is not yet,' he said, in a queer Biblical sort of way. 'It was a sudden weakness on my part. I had not meant it, you may be sure.'

"The only thing I _am_ sure about," I said, feeling thoroughly vexed about the tear, "is that we have been in this room nearly an hour.

Please unlock the door.

"Then we went downstairs."

After that follow one or two postscripts of a reflective nature, the general trend of which seems to indicate that Robin is rather a dear, but quite impossible.

"A flippant and unfeeling letter," you say, sir? Perhaps. But there is often no reserve so deep or so delicate as that which is veiled by a frivolous exterior and a mocking attitude towards sentiment in general.

Some sensitive people are so afraid of having their hearts dragged to light that, to escape inquisition, they pretend they do not possess any.

Moreover, I know Dolly well enough to be certain that she was not quite so brutally unkind to Robin during this interview as she would have us believe.

"The blundering creature! He went about it in _quite_ the wrong way,"

you say, madam? Very likely. But if a woman only took a man when he went about it in exactly the right way, how very few marriages there would be!

BOOK TWO.

THE FINISHED ARTICLE

CHAPTER ELEVEN.

A MISFIRE.

I.

There is an undefinable character and distinctiveness about Sunday morning which is not possessed by any other day of the week.

Not that the remaining six are lacking in individuality. Monday is a depressed and reluctant individual; Tuesday is a full-blooded and energetic citizen; Wednesday a cheerful and contented gentleman who does not intend to overwork himself to-day,--this is probably due to the fact that we used to have a half-holiday on Wednesdays at school; and when I got into Parliament I found that the same rule held there; Thursday I regard as one who ploughs steadily on his way, lacking enthusiasm but comfortably conscious of a second wind; Friday is a debilitated but hopeful toiler, whose sole joy in his work lies in anticipating its speedy conclusion; and Saturday is a radiant fellow with a straw hat and a week-end bag.

Still, one week-day is very like another at waking time. My mental vision, never pellucid, is in its most opaque condition in the early grey of the morning; and at Oxford, I remember, I found it necessary to instruct my scout to rouse me from slumber in some such fashion as this: "Eight o'clock on Thursday mornin', sir!" (as if I had slept since Monday at least), or "'Alf-past nine, slight rain, and a Toosday, sir!"

However, no one was ever yet needed to inform me that it was Sunday morning. This is perhaps natural enough in town, where the silence of the streets and the sound of bells proclaim the day; but why the same phenomenon should occur in the middle of a Highland moor, where every day is one glorious open-air Sabbath, passes my comprehension.

I discussed the problem after breakfast as I sat and smoked my pipe in the heathery garden of Strathmyrtle, a shooting-lodge at which we were being hospitably entertained by Kitty's uncle, Sir John Rubislaw, a retired Admiral of the Fleet, whose forty years' official connection with Britannia's realm betrayed itself in a nautical roll, syncopated by gout, and what I may describe as a hurricane-deck voice. My three companions in the debate were my host, Master Gerald, and another guest in the house, one Dermott, an officer in a Highland regiment.

The Admiral ascribed my Sabbath intuition to the working of some inward and automatic monitor; while Dermott, among whose many sterling qualities delicate fancy was not included, put it down to the smell of some special dish indigenous to Sunday breakfast. My brother-in-law's contribution to the debate was an unseemly and irreverent parallel between Saturday night potations and Sunday morning "heads."

To us entered Dolly and Phillis.

Our hostess, together with Kitty and the other girl of the party--an American young lady of considerable personal attractions--had driven off to church in what is locally called a "machine." The duties of escort had been voluntarily undertaken by an undergraduate named Standish, who was the latest recruit to the American young lady's army of worshippers.

The rest of us had stayed at home--the Admiral because he not infrequently did so; I because I was expecting Robin back by the "machine" (which was to pick him up at a wayside station, where he had been sitting on his portmanteau ever since six o'clock that morning, having been dropped there by the night mail from London), and was anticipating two or three hours' solid work with him; Gerald because he had succeeded in evading his eldest sister's eye during the search for church recruits; Dolly to look after Phillis; and Captain Dermott for reasons not unconnected with Dolly.