me feelings overcame me. Will you be mine,
Lavinia? I am a plain ould soldier, and have little to offer you save a
faithful heart, and that is yours, and always will be. Will you make
the remainder of me life happy by becoming me wife?" He endeavoured to
pass his arm round her waist, but she sprang up from the sofa and stood
upon the rug, facing him with an amused and somewhat triumphant smile
upon her buxom features.

"Look here, major," she said, "I am a plain-spoken woman, as my poor Tom
that's dead was a plain-spoken man. Out with it straight, now--have you
come after me, or have you come after my money?"

The major was so astonished at this point-blank question, that for a
moment he sat speechless upon the sofa. Being a man of ready resource,
however, and one who was accustomed to sudden emergencies, he soon
recovered himself.

"Yoursilf, of course" cried he. "If you hadn't a stiver I would do the
same."

"Take care! take care!" said the lady, with a warning finger uplifted.
"You heard of the breaking of the Agra Bank?"

"What of that?"

"Every penny that I had in the world was in it."

This was facer number two for the campaigner. He recovered himself more
quickly from this one, however, and inflated his chest with even more
than his usual pomposity.

"Lavinia," said he, "you have been straight with me, and, bedad, I'll be
so with you? When I first thought of you I was down in the world, and,
much as I admired you, I own that your money was an inducement as well
as yoursilf. I was so placed that it was impossible for me to think of
any woman who had not enough to keep up her own end of the game.
Since that time I've done bether. How I got it is neither here nor
there, but I have a little nist-egg in the bank and see me way to
increasing it. You tell me your money's gone, and I tell you I've
enough for two; so say the word, acushla, and it's done."

"What! without the money?"

"Damn the money?" exclaimed Major Tobias Clutterbuck, and put his arm
for the second time around his companion. This time it remained there.
What happened after that is neither my business nor the reader's.
Couples who have left their youth behind them have their own little
romance quite as much as their juniors, and it is occasionally the more
heartfelt of the two.

"What a naughty boy to swear!" exclaimed the widow at last. "Now I must
give you a lecture since I have the chance."

"Bless her mischievous eyes!"