mean, truly and really, that you're in love
with Me, can you?"

"Surely it isn't news to you."

"I should think it was!" I exclaimed, rapturously. "Oh, I'm so happy!"

"Another scalp--though a humble one?"

"Don't be a beast. I'm so horribly in love with you, you know. It's been
hurting so _dreadfully_."

Then I rather think he said "My darling!" but I'm not quite sure, for I
was so busy falling into his arms, and he was holding me so very, very
tightly.

We stayed like that for a long time, not saying anything, and not even
thinking, but feeling--feeling. And the couriers' dining-room was a
princess's boudoir in an enchanted palace. The grease spots were stars
and moons that had rolled out of heaven to see how two poor mortals
looked when they were perfectly happy. Just a poor chauffeur and a motor
maid: but the world was theirs.

CHAPTER XXXII

After a while we talked again, and explained all the cross-purposes to
each other, with the most interesting pauses in between the
explanations. And Jack told me about himself, and Miss Paget.

It seems that her only sister was his mother, and she had been in love
with his father before he met the sister. The father's name was Claud,
and Jack was named after him. It was Miss Paget's favourite name,
because of the man she had loved. But the first Claud wasn't very lucky.
He lost all his own money and most of his wife's, and died in South
America, where he'd gone in the hope of making more. Then the wife,
Jack's mother, died too, while he was at Eton. After that Miss Paget's
house was his home. Whenever he was extravagant at Oxford, as he was
sometimes, she would pay his debts quite happily, and tell him that
everything she had would be his some day, so he was not to bother about
money. Accordingly, he didn't bother, but lived rather a lazy life--so
he said--and enjoyed himself. A couple of years before I met him he got
interested, through a friend, in a newly invented motor, which they both
thought would be a wonderful success. Jack tried to get his aunt
interested, too, but she didn't like the friend who had invented
it--seemed jealous of Jack's affection for him--and refused to have
anything to do with the affair. Jack had gone so far, however, while
taking her consent for granted, that he felt bound to go on; and when
Miss Paget would have nothing to do with floating the new invention,
Jack sold out the investments of his own little fortune (all that was