“I won’t laugh,” she said, “tell me.”

“No—­really?—­shall I?”

Whereupon there burst forth a history precisely similar it seemed to some half dozen others she had already heard from the same lips.  A pretty girl—­or rather “an exquisite creature!” met at the house of some relation in Scotland, met again at the “Boats” at Oxford, and yet again at Commemoration balls, Nuneham picnics, and the rest; adored and adorable; yet, of course, a sphinx born for the torment of men, taking her haughty way over a prostrate sex, kind to-day, cruel to-morrow; not to be won by money, yet, naturally, not to be won without it; possessed like Rose Aylmer of “every virtue, every grace,” whether of form or family; yet making nothing but a devastating and death-dealing use of them—­how familiar it all was!—­and how many more of them there seemed to be in the world, on a man’s reckoning, than on a woman’s!

“And you know,” said the lad, eagerly, “though she’s so frightfully pretty—­well, frightfully fetching, rather—­and well dressed and all the rest of it, she isn’t a bit silly, not one of your empty-headed girls—­not she.  She’s read a lot of things—­a lot!  I’m sure, Miss Boyce”—­he looked at her confidently,—­“if you were to see her you’d think her awfully clever.  And yet she’s so little—­and so dainty—­and she dances—­my goodness! you should see her dance, skirt-dance I mean—­Letty Lind isn’t in it!  She’s good too, awfully good.  I think her mother’s a most dreadful old bore—­well, no, I didn’t mean that—­of course I didn’t mean that!—­but she’s fussy, you know, and invalidy, and has to be wrapped up in shawls, and dragged about in bath chairs, and Betty’s an angel to her—­she is really—­though her mother’s always snapping her head off.  And as to the poor—­”

Something in his tone, in the way he had of fishing for her approval, sent Marcella into a sudden fit of laughter.  Then she put out a hand to restrain this plunging lover.

“Look here—­do come to the point—­have you proposed to her?”

“I should rather think I have!” said the boy, fervently.  “About once a week since Christmas.  Of course she’s played with me—­that sort always does—­but I think I might really have a chance with her, if it weren’t for her mother—­horrible old—­no, of course I don’t mean that!  But now it comes in—­what I oughtn’t to tell you—­I know I oughtn’t to tell you!  I’m always making a beastly mess of it.  It’s because I can’t help talking of it!”

And shaking his curly head in despair, he once more plunged his red cheeks into his hands and fell abruptly silent.

Marcella coloured for sympathy.  “I really wish you wouldn’t talk in riddles,” she said.  “What is the matter with you?—­of course you must tell me.”