. What _am_ I to say to Aunt Priscilla?"

"'How d'ye do?' first; and then--in an _airy_ tone, you know--'I am
going to be married, as soon as time permits, to Brian Desmond.' No,
no," penitently, catching a firmer hold of her as she makes a valiant
but ineffectual effort to escape the shelter of his arms, "I didn't mean
it. I am sorry, and I'll never do it again. I'll sympathize with
_anything_ you say, if you will promise not to desert me."

"It is you," reproachfully, "who desert me, and in my hour of need. I
don't think," wistfully, "I am so _very_ much to blame, am I? I didn't
_ask_ you to fall in love with me, and when you came here all this week
to see Madam O'Connor I couldn't possibly have turned my back upon you,
could I?"

"You could; but it would have brought you to the verge of suicide and
murder. Because, as you turned, I should have turned too, on the chance
of seeing your face, and so on, and on until vertigo set in, and death
ensued, and we were both buried in one common grave. It sounds awful,
doesn't it? Well, and where, then, will you come to meet me to-morrow?"

"To the river, I suppose," says Monica.

"Do you know," says Desmond, after a short pause, "I shall have to leave
you soon? Not now; not until October, perhaps; but whenever I do go it
will be for a month at least."

"A _month_?"

"Yes."

"A whole long month!"

"The longest month I shall have ever known," sadly.

"I certainly didn't think you would go and do a thing like _that_," says
his beloved, with much severity.

"My darling, I can't help it; but we needn't talk about it just yet.
Only it came into my head a moment ago, that it would be very sweet to
get a letter from you while I was away: a letter," softly, "a letter
from my own wife to her husband."

Monica glances at him in a half-perplexed fashion, and then, as though
some thought has come to her for the first time, and brought merriment
in its train, her lips part, and all her lovely face breaks into silent
mirth.

"What is it?" asks he, a little--just a very little--disconcerted.

"Oh, nothing; nothing, really. Only it _does_ seem so funny to think I
have got a husband," she says, in a choked whisper, and then her mirth
gets beyond her control, and, but that Brian presses her head down on
his chest, and so stifles it, they might have had Miss Fitzgerald out
upon them in ten seconds.

"Hush!" whispers the embryo husband, giving her a little shake. But he
is laugh