“And I engage Ralph shall be ready to dance at her wedding, or eat a hearty breakfast—­We don’t dance at weddings now, and very properly.  It’s a horrid sad business, not to be treated with levity.—­Is that his regiment?” she said, as they passed out of the hussar-sentinelled gardens.  “Tush, tush, child!  Master Ralph will recover, as—­hem! others have done.  A little headache—­you call it heartache—­and up you rise again, looking better than ever.  No doubt, to have a grain of sense forced into your brains, you poor dear children! must be painful..  Girls suffer as much as boys, I assure you.  More, for their heads are weaker, and their appetites less constant.  Do I talk like your father now?  Whatever makes the boy fidget at his watch so?”

Richard stopped short.  Time spoke urgently.

“I must go,” he said.

His face did not seem good for trifling.  Mrs. Doria would trifle in spite.

“Listen, Clare!  Richard is going.  He says he has an engagement.  What possible engagement can a young man have at eleven o’clock in the morning?—­unless it’s to be married!” Mrs. Doria laughed at the ingenuity of her suggestion.

“Is the church handy, Ricky?” said Adrian.  “You can still give us half-an-hour if it is.  The celibate hours strike at Twelve.”  And he also laughed in his fashion.

“Won’t you stay with us, Richard?” Clare asked.  She blushed timidly, and her voice shook.

Something indefinite—­a sharp-edged thrill in the tones made the burning bridegroom speak gently to her.

“Indeed, I would, Clare; I should like to please you, but I have a most imperative appointment—­that is, I promised—­I must go.  I shall see you again”—­

Mrs. Doria, took forcible possession of him.  “Now, do come, and don’t waste words.  I insist upon your having some breakfast first, and then, if you really must go, you shall.  Look! there’s the house.  At least you will accompany your aunt to the door.”

Richard conceded this.  She little imagined what she required of him.  Two of his golden minutes melted into nothingness.  They were growing to be jewels of price, one by one more and more precious as they ran, and now so costly-rare—­rich as his blood! not to kindest relations, dearest friends, could he give another.  The die is cast!  Ferryman! push off.

“Good-bye!” he cried, nodding bluffly at the three as one, and fled.

They watched his abrupt muscular stride through the grounds of the house.  He looked like resolution on the march.  Mrs. Doria, as usual with her out of her brother’s hearing, began rating the System.

“See what becomes of that nonsensical education!  The boy really does not know how to behave like a common mortal.  He has some paltry appointment, or is mad after some ridiculous idea of his own, and everything must be sacrificed to it!  That’s what Austin calls concentration of the faculties.  I think it’s more likely to lead to downright insanity than to greatness of any kind.  And so I shall tell Austin.  It’s time he should be spoken to seriously about him.”