“Ah,” said Lethbury with heroic indifference; and his wife hastily changed the subject.

Mr. Winstanley Budd was a young man who suffered from an excess of manner.  Politeness gushed from him in the driest seasons.  He was always performing feats of drawing-room chivalry, and the approach of the most unobtrusive female threw him into attitudes which endangered the furniture.  His features, being of the cherubic order, did not lend themselves to this role; but there were moments when he appeared to dominate them, to force them into compliance with an aquiline ideal.  The range of Mr. Budd’s social benevolence made its object hard to distinguish.  He spread his cloak so indiscriminately that one could not always interpret the gesture, and Jane’s impassive manner had the effect of increasing his demonstrations:  she threw him into paroxysms of politeness.

At first he filled the house with his amenities; but gradually it became apparent that his most dazzling effects were directed exclusively to Jane.  Lethbury and his wife held their breath and looked away from each other.  They pretended not to notice the frequency of Mr. Budd’s visits, they struggled against an imprudent inclination to leave the young people too much alone.  Their conclusions were the result of indirect observation, for neither of them dared to be caught watching Mr. Budd:  they behaved like naturalists on the trail of a rare butterfly.

In his efforts not to notice Mr. Budd, Lethbury centred his attentions on Jane; and Jane, at this crucial moment, wrung from him a reluctant admiration.  While her parents went about dissembling their emotions, she seemed to have none to conceal.  She betrayed neither eagerness nor surprise; so complete was her unconcern that there were moments when Lethbury feared it was obtuseness, when he could hardly help whispering to her that now was the moment to lower the net.

Meanwhile the velocity of Mr. Budd’s gyrations increased with the ardor of courtship:  his politeness became incandescent, and Jane found herself the centre of a pyrotechnical display culminating in the “set piece” of an offer of marriage.

Mrs. Lethbury imparted the news to her husband one evening after their daughter had gone to bed.  The announcement was made and received with an air of detachment, as though both feared to be betrayed into unseemly exultation; but Lethbury, as his wife ended, could not repress the inquiry, “Have they decided on a day?”

Mrs. Lethbury’s superior command of her features enabled her to look shocked.  “What can you be thinking of?  He only offered himself at five!”

“Of course—­of course—­” stammered Lethbury—­“but nowadays people marry after such short engagements—­”

“Engagement!” said his wife solemnly.  “There is no engagement.”

Lethbury dropped his cigar.  “What on earth do you mean?”

“Jane is thinking it over.”

"Thinking it over?" “She has asked for a month before deciding.”