have known I didn't mean it."

"It was not what you _said_." She paused.

"What was it then?"

"You look--every one looks--so happy and content--so bursting with
prosperity, so supremely filled with--oh, can't you see, can't you see,
that I'm alone and miserable, and different? When you pretended to
admire me just now----"

"Pretended? I didn't pretend!" indignantly.

"You said I looked 'uncommonly fit'."

"So you did,--so you do."

"And who cares? What's the good of it? If it signified a jot to any
single human being how I looked----"

"Leo! _you know I care!_"

She had done it, she had provoked it. If she had taken a chisel in her
hand and dug out the admission by bodily force, she could not have been
more directly responsible than she now was--and yet she stopped short
startled.

It was but for a moment however. "You?" she cried, "you could hardly say
less than that, considering it was such a direct fish for a
compliment,--no,--no, Val; do be quiet and let me speak,--what I mean is
that really, _really_, you know, I am most awfully down in my luck, and
I don't see the slightest prospect of anything better. I had hoped that
somehow a way would open----"

"It would, if you would marry me."

"Marry you? Nonsense!"

"Good gracious, Leo! _Nonsense?_"

"Of course. Can't you see I'm in earnest, and talk rationally for once?"

"Hang it all, am I not talking rationally, as rationally as ever I did
in my life?"

"That's not saying much. You needn't be affronted, it's an honour for
you to have me talk to you like this."

"Is it though? I don't see it--I think you are beastly unfair. I do
think that." And he pulled out his handkerchief and blew his nose by way
of protest. "Just now you were whimpering because you had no one to care
for you,--and I believe you said it just to get me to say _I_ did."
Suddenly--"It was a shabby trick, Leo; and then to shut me up like that,
when I only meant to do my best for you!"

"Be quiet, be quiet." Despite a twinge of conscience, Leo held her own
stoutly. "No one but you would ever have thought of such a thing."

"That's all you know about it. My grandmother did. There!"

"You spoke to her, I suppose?"

"Not I. _She_ put _me_ up to it. Honour bright, she did. I daresay I
should have thought of it for myself," continued Val, quickly, "but I
hadn't, till she did. She was always praising you, and saying how pretty
you were, and what a bad business your marriage was. I