or your kindness, believe me,
with love, yours affectionately, Sybil Carlton."

{56}

CHAPTER IX

_His Visits to her Home--The Engaged Couple in Public--In
Society--Visiting at the same House--Going about together--The
Question of Expenses._

His Visits to her Home.

If distance parts the loving couple he will only be able to spend his
leave, or annual holidays, with her, and will make a point of
consulting her movements before he lays any plans for his leisure
time. If he could meet her abroad, or at the seaside, he would not go
off yachting without her, nor postpone his holiday till the shooting
had begun rather than spend the month of June with her in the suburbs.
If he lives in the same neighbourhood as his beloved he will have many
opportunities of being with her. He ought never to neglect his work
for his courtship, and a girl should be very careful not to propose
such a thing. It is a poor lookout for their future if they put
pleasure first. He will probably be expected or permitted to spend two
or three evenings a week at her home, dine there on Sundays, and, if
he is busy all the week, devote Saturday afternoons to her entirely. A
man of leisure can make his own arrangements; the business or
professional man must do his love-making when he can.

The Engaged Couple in Public.

"Some men like to advertise their kissing rights," said an engaged man
to me the other day; "but for my part I don't think there should be
anything in the bearing of an engaged couple in public to indicate
that they are more than friends." Here, I think, we have the etiquette
of the matter in a nutshell. Wherever the lovers are they will be
supremely conscious of each other's presence, but it need not be writ
{57} large over their actions. It is sometimes debated whether lovers
should kiss in public. As the sweetest kisses must ever be those
exchanged "under four eyes," as the Germans put it, there seems little
advantage in a mere conventional "peck" in the public gaze. A close
clasp of the hand, a silent greeting of the eyes, will be truer to the
love that is held too sacred for exhibition.

The man's attentions should never merge into questionable hilarity. He
ought to respect as well as love the woman he hopes to marry. She
should equally avoid gushing and tyrannising over him. To see a girl
ordering her _fiance_ about, making him fetch and carry like a black
boy, and taking his submission as her d