Dick looked rather hard at Lord Newhaven.

“I should not have said that unless I had known it to be a lie,” continued the latter, “because I dislike being kicked.  But, Dick, listen to me.  You have not,” with sudden misgiving, “laid any little matrimonial project before her this evening, have you?”

“No; I was not quite such a fool as that.”

“Well!  Such things do occur.  Moonlight, you know, etc.  I was possessed by a devil once, and proposed by moonlight, as all my wife’s friends know, and probably her maid.  But, seriously, Dick, you are not making progress, as you say yourself.”

“Well!” rather sullenly.

“Well, on-lookers see most of the game.  Miss West may—­I don’t say she is—­but if things go on as they are for another week she may become slightly bored.  That was why I joined you at supper.  She had had, for the time, enough.”

“Of me?” said Dick, reddening under his tan.

“Just so.  It is a matter of no importance after marriage, but it should be avoided beforehand.  Are you really in earnest about this?”

Dick delivered himself slowly and deliberately of certain platitudes.

“Well, I hope I shall hear you say all that again some day in a condensed form before a clergyman.  In the meanwhile—­”

“In the meanwhile I had better clear out.”

“Yes; I don’t enjoy saying so in the presence of my own galantine and mayonnaise, but that is it.  Go, and—­come back.”

“If you have a Bradshaw,” said Dick, “I’ll look out my train now.  I think there is an express to London about seven in the morning, if you can send me to the station.”

“But the post only comes in at eight.”

“Well, you can send my letters after me.”

“I dare say I can, my diplomatist.  But you are not going to leave till the post has arrived, when you will receive business letters requiring your immediate presence in London.  You are not going to let a woman know that you leave on her account.”

“You are very sharp, Cackles,” said Dick, drearily.  “And I’ll take a leaf out of your book and lie, if you think it is the right thing.  But I expect she will know very well that the same business which took me to that infernal temperance meeting has taken me to London.”

Rachel was vaguely relieved when Dick went off next morning.  She was not, as a rule, oppressed by the attentions she received from young men, which in due season became “marked,” and then resulted in proposals neatly or clumsily expressed.  But she was disturbed when she thought of Dick, and his departure was like the removal of a weight, not a heavy, but still a perceptible one.  For Rachel was aware that Dick was in deadly earnest, and that his love was growing steadily, almost unconsciously, was accumulating like snow, flake by flake, upon a mountain-side.  Some day, perhaps not for a long time, but some day, there would be an avalanche, and, in his own language, she “would be in it.”