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church the wedding is to be in. And my mother is already dreaming of new grandchildren and wondering if there will be time to wash and iron the family christening robes after Claude’s baby and before ours. All while I stand by looking complacent and rather as if a falling star had hit me in the eye.”
    “I don’t like to disappoint them,” Sophia said, “but I would not marry you, Francis, if you were the last man on earth.”
    “In some ways we are remarkably well suited, Soph,” he said pleasantly. “We think alike. I do not believe I would marry you even under similar but reversed conditions to the ones you mentioned.”
    “You are no gentleman,” she said. “You never have been.”
    “There is no point in being cross just because I refuse to marry you, Soph,” he said. “I was gentleman enough to allow you to refuse to marry me first. But enough of this quarreling. What happens next? We suddenly find that our love has cooled so that my parents and I can take ourselves off tomorrow and I can get back to the congenial life of raking?”
    “You would like that, too, would you not?” she said. “You would like to abandon me just as if I were a hot potato to be dropped at all cost?”
    “In short, yes,” he said. “But I gather from your tone that you have further use for me.”
    “Of course I have further use for you,” she said indignantly. “If you leave tomorrow or the next day, Francis, Mama will have no further need to stay here and she will go home and never see Papa again. And that will be that. And if that happens, I shall never marry anyone for I will not allow myself to be lured into such a life of misery. What are they doing? And
don’t look now
!”
    Lord Francis looked. “Strolling and talking,” he said.
    “Talking?” She looked up at him eagerly. “That is promising. Don’t you think so, Francis?”
    “We have been talking, too,” he said. “Quarreling.”
    She sighed. “Do you think they are quarreling, too?” she asked.
    “No idea,” he said. “But you can depend upon it that they are too well-bred to come to fisticuffs, Soph. So I am to stay in order to keep them together, am I? Do you think they are going to allow us to become betrothed?”
    “Not if Papa can help it,” she said. “He says that I am far too young even though I have had my eighteenth birthday already and am older than Mama was when she married. But that would be his meaning, would it not? We are going to have to be distraught, Francis. We are going to have to threaten elopement or suicide.”
    “By Jove,” he said. “Quite a choice, is it not? The devil and the deep blue sea, would you say?”
    “No,” she said. “But I would fully expect you to do so. I would choose suicide without the slightest hesitation. It will be best if they do consent, though.” She frowned in thought. “We will want to marry without delay, of course. A summer wedding. Mama will have to stay to plan it. There will be a great deal for her and Papa to discuss. And perhaps our wedding will remind them of their own.”
    “Ah,” he said, “I hate to interrupt this pleasant train of thought, Soph, but did you say our
wedding
? What do we do afterward? Neglect to consummate it and go begging for an annulment?”
    “Oh,” she said. “You are right. There cannot actually be a wedding, can there? But just the planning of it will remind them. Don’t you think? And how could you say what you just said? It would be just like you to humiliate me by annulling our marriage and having the whole world say that I could not even attract you sufficiently to tempt you on our wedding night.”
    “Soph,” he said, “I am glad the moon is not quite full. I might hear some words of real madness from you.”
    “But really,” she said, “you could not have said anything more insulting, Francis. I should die of mortification.”
    “Good Lord,” he said. “And to think that I gave up a week or two or five of a life of genial