Page:An American Girl in India.djvu/44

 he is nearly a head taller than I am? if not, I make the humiliating confession now in brackets as quite unimportant).

'The Government is going to'

Then, woman-like, I changed my mind, and didn't want to hear.

'I thought,' I said hurriedly, 'that it was a State secret.'

I suddenly felt that I shouldn't respect him any more if he told me anything that really was a secret. Yet, of course, I should have been annoyed if he hadn't offered to tell me after that interrogative look in my eyes. I have thought the whole thing out quietly since, but I haven't yet quite made up my mind whether a woman prefers a man who won't divulge to her a secret he ought to withhold, or the man who gives in and tells her. I'm inclined to think that she respects the former against her will, which doesn't make the home sort of friendly, while she much prefers the latter, because she can look down upon him. There's nothing pleases a woman so much as having something to look down upon.

'There are some people,' whispered Lord Hendley, still with his head bent down towards me, 'that no one would expect a man to keep even a State secret from.'

My heart, I admit, went all of a flutter. Was that really equal to a proposal? What I should have said I don't quite know, for just then that tiresome Aunt Agatha took possession of me and bundled me into the carriage. She was murmuring