"Are you fond of diamonds, Mr Elbraham?" she said, with a peculiar look at him from beneath her darkly fringed lids--a strange look for one so innocent and young. "Yes, on some people," he said. "Are you?" "Oh yes; I love them," she said eagerly. "All right, then. Look here, Clotilde; say the word, and you can have diamonds till you are sick of them, and everything else. I--hang it all! I'm not used to this sort of thing," he said, dabbing his moist face with his handkerchief; "but I said to myself, when I came to-night, `I won't shilly-shally, but ask her out plain.' So look here, my dear, may I put this diamond ring on the finger of the lady that's to be Mrs Elbraham as soon as she likes?" Clotilde darted one luminous look at him which took in his squat, vulgar figure and red face, and then her eyes half-closed, and she saw tall, manly, handsome Marcus Glen look appealingly in her eyes, and telling her he loved her with all his heart. She loved him--she told herself she loved him very dearly; but he was poor, and on the one side was life in lodgings in provincial towns wherever the regiment was stationed; on the other side, horses and carriages and servants, a splendid town mansion, diamonds, dresses, the opera, every luxury and gaiety that money could command. "Poor Marcus!" she sighed to herself. "He's very nice!" "Come," said Mr Elbraham; "I don't suppose you want me to go down on my knees and propose, do you? I want to do the thing right, but I'm a business man, you know; and, I say, Clotilde, you're the most beautiful gal I ever saw in my life." She slowly raised her eyes to his, and there was a wicked, mocking laugh in her look as she said in a low tone: "Am I?" "Yes, that you are," he whispered in a low, passionate tone. "You are laughing at me," she said softly. "'Pon my soul I'm not," he whispered again; "I swear I'm not; and I love you--there, I can't tell you how much. I say, don't play with me. I'll do anything you like--give you anything you like. I'll make the princesses bite their lips with jealousy to see your jewels. I will, honour! May I? Yes? Slip it on? I say, my beautiful darling, when may I put on the plain gold one?" "Oh, hush!" she whispered softly, as she surrendered her hand, and fixed her eyes in what he told himself was a loving, rapturous gaze upon his; "be content now." "But no games," he whispered; "you'll be my wife?" "Yes," she said in the same low tone, and he raised the beringed hand to his lips, while the Honourable Isabella uttered a little faint sigh, and her book trembled visibly in her attenuated hands. "Hah!" ejaculated Mr Elbraham; and then to himself: "What things diamonds are!" Perhaps he would have felt less satisfied if he had known that, when Clotilde fixed her eyes upon his, she was looking down a long vista of pleasure stretched out in the future.