“Oh, everybody goes through the D. C. somehow or other,” answered Cecil, with philosophy.  “It’s like the Church, the Commons, and the Gallows, you know—­one of the popular Institutions.”

“And it’s the only Law Court where the robber cuts a better figure than the robbed,” laughed the Seraph; consoling himself that he had escaped the future chance of showing in the latter class of marital defrauded, by shying that proposal during the Symphony in A, on which his thoughts ran, as the thoughts of one who has just escaped from an Alpine crevasse run on the past abyss in which he had been so nearly lost forever.  “I say, Beauty, were you ever near doing anything serious—­asking anybody to marry you, eh?  I suppose you have been—­they do make such awful hard running on one” and the poor hunted Seraph stretched his magnificent limbs with the sigh of a martyred innocent.

“I was once—­only once!”

“Ah, by Jove!  And what saved you?”

The Seraph lifted himself a little, with a sort of pitying, sympathizing curiosity toward a fellow-sufferer.

“Well, I’ll tell you,” said Bertie, with a sigh as of a man who hated long sentences, and who was about to plunge into a painful past.  “It’s ages ago; day I was at a Drawing room; year Blue Ruin won the Clearwell for Royal, I think.  Wedged up there, in that poking place, I saw such a face—­the deuce, it almost makes me feel enthusiastic now.  She was just out—­an angel with a train!  She had delicious eyes—­like a spaniel’s you know—­a cheek like this peach, and lips like that strawberry there, on the top of your ice.  She looked at me, and I was in love!  I knew who she was—­Irish lord’s daughter—­girl I could have had for the asking; and I vow that I thought I would ask her—­I actually was as far gone as that; I actually said to myself, I’d hang about her a week or two, and then propose.  You’ll hardly believe it, but I did.  Watched her presented; such grace, such a smile, such a divine lift of the lashes.  I was really in love, and with a girl who would marry me!  I was never so near a fatal thing in my life——­”

“Well?” asked the Seraph, pausing to listen till he let the ice in his sherry-cobbler melt away.  When you have been so near breaking your neck down the Matrimonial Matterhorn, it is painfully interesting to hear how your friend escaped the same risks of descent.

“Well,” resumed Bertie, “I was very near it.  I did nothing but watch her; she saw me, and I felt she was as flattered and as touched as she ought to be.  She blushed most enchantingly; just enough, you know; she was conscious I followed her; I contrived to get close to her as she passed out, so close that I could see those exquisite eyes lighten and gleam, those exquisite lips part with a sigh, that beautiful face beam with the sunshine of a radiant smile.  It was the dawn of love I had taught her!  I pressed nearer and nearer, and I caught her soft whisper as she leaned to her mother:  ’Mamma, I’m so hungry!  I could eat a whole chicken!’ The sigh, the smile, the blush, the light, were for her dinner—­not for me!  The spell was broken forever.  A girl whom I had looked at could think of wings and merry-thoughts and white sauce!  I have never been near a proposal again.”