Page:The Last Chronicle of Barset Vol 2.djvu/36

24 just now, it is nearly eleven o'clock, and I must ask you to go away. Bon voyage, and a happy return to you."

"And you will be glad to see me when I am back? Tell me that you will be glad to see me."

"I will tell you nothing of the kind. Mr. Eames, if you do, I will be very angry with you." And then he went.

On his way back to his own lodgings he did call on Conway Dalrymple, and in spite of his need for early rising, sat smoking with the artist for an hour. "If you don't take care, young man," said his friend, "you will find yourself in a scrape with your Madalina."

"What sort of a scrape?"

"As you walk away from Porchester Terrace some fine day, you will have to congratulate yourself on having made a successful overture towards matrimony."

"You don't think I am such a fool as that comes to?"

"Other men as wise as you have done the same sort of thing. Miss Demolines is very clever, and I daresay you find it amusing."

"It isn't so much that she's clever, and I can hardly say that it is amusing. One gets awfully tired of it, you know. But a fellow must have something to do, and that is as good as anything else."

"I suppose you have not heard that one young man levanted last year to save himself from a breach of promise case?"

"I wonder whether he had any money in Indian securities?"

"What makes you ask that?"

"Nothing particular."

"Whatever little he had he chose to save, and I think I heard that he went to Canada. His name was Shorter; and they say that, on the eve of his going, Madalina sent him word that she had no objection to the colonies, and that, under the pressing emergency of his expatriation, she was willing to become Mrs. Shorter with more expedition than usually attends fashionable weddings. Shorter, however, escaped, and has never been seen back again."

Eames declared that he did not believe a word of it. Nevertheless, as he walked home he came to the conclusion that Mr. Shorter must have been the handsome gentleman with Indian securities, to whom "no" had been said once too often.

While sitting with Conway Dalrymple, he had forgotten to say a word about Jael and Sisera.