“I hope you’ll go on being happy,” she said, again pressing closer to him.  “But you know that sometimes, Bill—­well, I shall dine at Edmonton while you do dine at Ware.  It’s no good my trying to conceal that from you.”

“I—­I don’t understand,” he stammered out.  What did Bubbles mean by saying that?

“You’ll know soon enough,” she said, with that little wise look of hers—­the little look he loved.  “But whenever I’m naughty or unreasonable, or, or selfish, Bill—­I’m afraid I shall often be very selfish—­then you must just turn to me, and say:  ’You know, Bubbles, when all’s said and done, you’re my Serf; but for me you wouldn’t be here.’”

Bill Donnington looked at her, and then he said solemnly and very deliberately:  “I don’t feel that you ought to marry me out of gratitude, Bubbles.”

She took her hands off his shoulders, and clapped them gleefully.  “I was waiting for that, too!” she exclaimed.  “I wonder you didn’t say it at once—­I quite thought you would.”

He said seriously:  “But I really mean it.  I couldn’t bear to think that you married me just because I dragged you out of the water.”

“I’m really marrying you, if you want to know,” she exclaimed, “because of Mr. Tapster!  During the last few days—­I wonder if you’ve noticed it, Bill?” (he had, indeed)—­“that man has looked at me as if I was his serf—­that’s a polite way of putting it—­and I don’t like it.  But I’ve got a friend—­you know Phyllis Burley?  I think she’d do for him exactly!  It would be so nice, too, for she’s devoted to me, and we should have the use of one of their motors whenever we felt like it.”

Bill shook his head decidedly.  “We never should feel like it,” he said; “even if Phyllis did marry Mr. Tapster, which I greatly doubt she’d even think of doing.”

“I’m going to tell him to-day,” she went on, “that he’s got to marry her.  There’s nothing indelicate about my saying that, because they’ve never met.  But it’ll work in his brain, you see if it doesn’t, like yeast in new bread!  Then I’ll bring them together, and then, and then—­”

“And then,” said Bill deliberately, “you’ll never, with my goodwill, see him again.  So find him a wife whom you don’t like, Bubbles.”

She looked at him meditatively.  “Very well,” she said.  “That will be my first sacrifice for you, Bill.  I’ll save him up for Violet Purton.  She’s a horrid girl—­and won’t she make his money fly!”

He was smiling at her rather oddly.

“Bill!” she exclaimed, startled.  “Bill!  I do believe you’re going to be master—­”

And then she flung her arms again round his neck.  “Kiss me,” she commanded, “kiss me, Bill.  And then you must go away, for it isn’t proper that you should be here, at this time of the morning, now that we’re engaged!”

CHAPTER XIX

That same morning, but a good deal later, Blanche Farrow woke with a start to find Pegler standing at her bedside with just one letter in her hand.