“Nonsense, dear; me give parties indeed, and you at Madeira!  Why, it’s just as though you asked Ruth to entertain the reapers without Naomi.  I’ll go and give the orders; but I do hope that it will be calm.  Why do you want to go now?”

“I’ll tell you.  Lord Minster has been proposing to me again, and announces his intention of going on doing so till I accept him.  You know, he has just got into the Cabinet, so he has celebrated the event by asking me to marry him, for the third time.”

“Poor fellow!  Perhaps he is very fond of you.”

“Not a bit of it.  He is fond of my good looks and my money.  I will tell you the substance of his speech this morning.  He stood like this, with his hands in his pockets, and said, ’I am now a cabinet minister.  It is a good thing that a cabinet minister should have somebody presentable to sit at the head of his table.  You are presentable.  I appreciate beauty, when I have time to think about it.  I observe that you are beautiful.  I am not very well-off for my position.  You, on the other hand, are immensely rich.  With your money, I can, in time, become Prime Minister.  It is, consequently, evidently to my advantage that you should marry me, and I have sacrificed a very important appointment in order to come and settle it.’”

Agatha laughed.

“And how did you answer him?”

“In his own style.  ‘Lord Minster,’ I said, ’I am, for the third time, honoured by your flattering proposal, but I have no wish to ornament your table, no desire to expose my beauty to your perpetual admiration, and no ambition to advance your political career.  I do not love you, and I had rather become the wife of a crossing-sweeper that I loved, than that of a member of the government for whom I have every respect, but no affection.’

“‘As the wife of a crossing-sweeper, it is probable,’ he answered, ’that you would be miserable.  As my wife, you would certainly be admired and powerful, and consequently happy.’

“‘Lord Minster,’ I said, ’you have studied human nature but very superficially, if you have not learnt that it is better for a woman to be miserable with the man she loves, than “admired, powerful, and consequently happy,” with one who has no attraction for her.’

“‘Your remark is interesting,’ he replied; ’but I think that there is something paradoxical about it.  I must be going now, as I have only five minutes to get to Westminster; but I will think it over, and answer it when we renew our conversation, which I propose to do very shortly,’ and he was gone before I could get in another word.”

“But why should that make you go to Madeira?”

“Because, my dear, if I don’t, so sure as I am a living woman, that man will tire me out and marry me, and I dislike him, and don’t want to marry him.  I have a strong will, but his is of iron.”

And so it came to pass that the names of Mrs. Carr, Miss Terry, and three servants, appeared upon the passenger list of Messrs. Donald Currie & Co.’s royal mail steamship Warwick Castle, due to sail for Madeira and the Cape ports on the 14th of June.