“I might try for that myself if you think it would please her,” said the lover.

“Please her!  And I should be Lady Murchison!” she let fall upon his ravished ears.  “Why, Lorne, she’d just worship us both!  But you’ll never do it.”

“Why not?”

Dora looked at him with pretty speculation.  She had reasons for supposing that she did admire the young man.

“You’re too nice,” she said.

“That isn’t good enough,” he responded, and drew her nearer.

“Then why did you ask me?—­No, Lorne, you are not to.  Suppose Father came in?”

“I shouldn’t mind—­Father’s on my side, I think.”

“Father isn’t on anybody’s side,” said his daughter, wisely.

“Dora, let me speak to him!”

Miss Milburn gave a clever imitation of a little scream of horror.

“Indeed I won’t!  Lorne, you are never, never to do that!  As if we were in a ridiculous English novel!”

“That’s the part of an English novel I always like,” said Lorne.  “The going and asking.  It must about scare the hero out of a year’s growth; but it’s a glorious thing to do—­it would be next day, anyhow.”

“It’s just the sort of thing to please Mother,” Dora meditated, “but she can’t be indulged all the time.  No, Lorne, you’ll have to leave it to me—­when there’s anything to tell.”

“There’s everything to tell now,” said he, who had indeed nothing to keep back.

“But you know what Mother is, Lorne.  Suppose they hadn’t any objection, she would never keep it to herself!  She’d want to go announcing it all over the place; she’d think it was the proper thing to do.”

“But, Dora, why not?  If you knew how I want to announce it!  I should like to publish it in the sunrise—­and the wind—­so that I couldn’t go out of doors without seeing it myself.”

“I shouldn’t mind having it in Toronto Society, when the time comes.  But not yet, Lorne—­not for ages.  I’m only twenty-two—­nobody thinks of settling down nowadays before she’s twenty-five at the very earliest.  I don’t know a single girl in this town that has—­among my friends, anyway.  That’s three years off, and you can’t expect me to be engaged for three years.”

“No.” said Lorne, “engaged six months, married the rest of the time.  Or the periods might run concurrently if you preferred—­I shouldn’t mind.”

“An engaged girl has the very worst time.  She gets hardly any attention, and as to dances—­well, it’s a good thing for her if the person she’s engaged to can dance,” she added, teasingly.

Lorne coloured.  “You said I was improving, Dora,” he said, and then laughed at the childish claim.  “But that isn’t really a thing that counts, is it?  If our lives only keep step it won’t matter much about the ’Washington Post.’  And so far as attention goes, you’ll get it as long as you live, you little princess.  Besides, isn’t it better to wear the love of one man than the admiration of half a dozen?”