ch that your Aunt Jeannie had come back sooner, because she
is about nine times as wise as I, and could have advised you instead of
me. As it is, since I think you may have to settle a very important
question any day, I have got to give you the best advice I can. I think
he will propose to you, as I said, any day; indeed, I feel quite certain
of it, else it would be abominable in me to talk to you about it at all.
Therefore, do make up your mind before he does. Don't say, when he does,
that you are not sure, that you must take time to consider it. There is
no reason why a girl should not say 'yes' or 'no' at once, unless the
question comes as an entire surprise, which it does not do except in
second-rate novels like this one."

Lady Nottingham dropped the condemned volume on the floor.

"In real life," she said, "every girl sees long before a man proposes
whether he is likely to do so, and should know quite well what she is
going to say. And I think you intend to say 'yes.' You must, however, be
quite sure that, as far as you can tell, you are making a wise choice.

"Now, I am not going to shock you, but very likely I am going to make
you think you are shocked. You are not really. The fact is, you are not
in love with him, but he attracts you with an attraction that is very
often in the same relation to love as the bud is to the flower. He has
the sort of attraction for you that often contains the folded immature
petals of the full flower. You wanted to ask me some series of questions
which would lead up to that answer. And then you wanted to ask me one
further question, which was whether that was enough to say 'yes' on.
And my answer to that is 'yes.'"

The diplomacy in Daisy was quite completely dead. All this, so easy to
the mature woman, seemed a sort of conjuring-trick to her. It was
thought-reading of the most advanced kind, the reading of thoughts that
she had not consciously formulated. And the soothsayer proceeded:--

"You have seen the advantages of such a marriage clearly enough. You are
ambitious, my dear, you want to have a big position, to have big houses
and plenty of money, and to take no thought of any material morrow. That
is an advantage; it is only the stupid people, who call their stupidity
unworldly, who think otherwise. But the great point is not to keep
'to-morrow' comfortable, but to keep an everlasting 'to-day.' You must
be sure of that. Whatever the years bring--and Heaven knows what they