“Lady” Gwendolen!  The pleasantness of that sound was all gone; it was an offense to her ear now.  She said: 

“There—­that sham belongs to the past; I will not be called by it any more.”

“I may call you simply Gwendolen?  You will allow me to drop the formalities straightway and name you by your dear first name without additions?”

She was dethroning the pink and replacing it with a rosebud.

“There—­that is better.  I hate pinks—­some pinks.  Indeed yes, you are to call me by my first name without additions—­that is,—­well, I don’t mean without additions entirely, but—­”

It was as far as she could get.  There was a pause; his intellect was struggling to comprehend; presently it did manage to catch the idea in time to save embarrassment all around, and he said gratefully—­

“Dear Gwendolen!  I may say that?”

“Yes—­part of it.  But—­don’t kiss me when I am talking, it makes me forget what I was going to say.  You can call me by part of that form, but not the last part.  Gwendolen is not my name.”

“Not your name?” This in a tone of wonder and surprise.

The girl’s soul was suddenly invaded by a creepy apprehension, a quite definite sense of suspicion and alarm.  She put his arms away from her, looked him searchingly in the eye, and said: 

“Answer me truly, on your honor.  You are not seeking to marry me on account of my rank?”

The shot almost knocked him through the wall, he was so little prepared for it.  There was something so finely grotesque about the question and its parent suspicion, that he stopped to wonder and admire, and thus was he saved from laughing.  Then, without wasting precious time, he set about the task of convincing her that he had been lured by herself alone, and had fallen in love with her only, not her title and position; that he loved her with all his heart, and could not love her more if she were a duchess, or less if she were without home, name or family.  She watched his face wistfully, eagerly, hopefully, translating his words by its expression; and when he had finished there was gladness in her heart—­ a tumultuous gladness, indeed, though outwardly she was calm, tranquil, even judicially austere.  She prepared a surprise for him, now, calculated to put a heavy strain upon those disinterested protestations of his; and thus she delivered it, burning it away word by word as the fuse burns down to a bombshell, and watching to see how far the explosion would lift him: 

“Listen—­and do not doubt me, for I shall speak the exact truth.  Howard Tracy, I am no more an earl’s child than you are!”

To her joy—­and secret surprise, also—­it never phased him.  He was ready, this time, and saw his chance.  He cried out with enthusiasm, “Thank heaven for that!” and gathered her to his arms.

To express her happiness was almost beyond her gift of speech.