e slaves of your
reason. You're dominated by the head, not by the heart. You're little
better than calculating-machines. Are you ever known, now, for instance,
to risk earth and heaven, and all things between them, on a sudden
unthinking impulse?"

"Not often, I daresay," he admitted.

"And you sit there as serene as a brazen statue, and own it without a
quaver," she reproached him.

"Surely," he urged, "in my character of Englishman, it behooves me to
appear smug and self-satisfied?"

"You're right," she agreed. "I wonder," she continued, after a moment's
pause, during which her eyes looked thoughtful, "I wonder whether you
would fall upon and annihilate a person who should venture to offer you
a word of well-meant advice."

"I should sit as serene as a brazen statue, and receive it without a
quaver," he promised.

"Well, then," said she, leaning forward a little, and dropping her
voice, "why don't you take your courage in both hands, and ask her?"

Peter stared.

"Be guided by me--and do it," she said.

"Do what?" he puzzled.

"Ask her to marry you, of course," she returned amiably. Then, without
allowing him time to shape an answer, "Touche!" she cried, in triumph.
"I 've brought the tell-tale colour to your cheek. And you a brazen
statue! 'They do not love who do not show their love.' But, in faith,
you show yours to any one who'll be at pains to watch you. Your eyes
betray you as often as ever you look at her. I had n't observed you for
two minutes by the clock, when I knew your secret as well as if you 'd
chosen me for your confessor. But what's holding you back? You
can't expect her to do the proposing. Now curse me for a meddlesome
Irishwoman, if you will--but why don't you throw yourself at her feet,
and ask her, like a man?"

"How can I?" said Peter, abandoning any desire he may have felt to beat
about the bush. Nay, indeed, it is very possible he welcomed, rather
than resented, the Irishwoman's meddling.

"What's to prevent you?" said she.

"Everything," said he.

"Everything is nothing. That?"

"Dear lady! She is hideously rich, for one thing."

"Getaway with you!" was the dear lady's warm expostulation. "What
has money to do with the question, if a man's in love? But that's the
English of it--there you are with your cold-blooded calculation. You
chain up your natural impulses as if they were dangerous beasts. Her
money never saved you from succumbing to her enchantments. Why should it