He experienced a queer sinking of the heart. "You can say that
you don't know, if anyone should be so rude as to ask." Suddenly she
caught her breath and stared at him in a sort of panic. "Heavens," she
whispered, the toast poised half-way to her lips, "_you_'re not, by any
chance, engaged, are you? Appalling thought!"
He laughed delightedly. "People won't ask about me, my dear Constance.
I'm already married, you know. But if anyone _should_ ask, you're not
obliged to answer."
She looked troubled and uncertain. "You may be really married, after
all," she speculated. "Who knows? Poor old Roxbury wouldn't have had the
tact to inquire."
"I am a henpecked bachelor, believe me."
For the next quarter of an hour they chatted in the liveliest, most
inconsequential fashion, getting on excellent terms with each other and
arriving at a fair sense of appreciation of what lay ahead of them in
the shape of peril and adventure.
She was the most delightful person he had ever met, as well as being the
most beautiful. There was a sprightly, ever-growing air of self-reliance
about her that charmed and reassured him. She possessed the capacity for
divining the sane and the ridiculous with splendid discrimination.
Moreover, she could jest and be serious with an impartial intelligence
that gratified his vanity without in the least inspiring the suspicion
that she was merely clever.
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