Encouraged by this trivial remark, he thought to himself, 'Hang it--here goes!' and while there occurred vaguely to his lazy mind recollections of all he had read of proposals, and seen of them on the stage, he took her hand in his, and said abruptly: 'Miss Collingwood--Clare--dearest Clare--will you be my wife? Will you marry me--love me--and all that, don't you know?' Clare withdrew her hand, and slightly elevated her proud eyebrows, which were dark and straight rather than arched, while something of a dangerous and then of a droll sparkle came into her dreamy and beautiful eyes, for neither the tone nor the mode of the proposal proved pleasing to her, in her then mood of mind especially. 'Excuse me, Major Desmond,' said she, scarcely knowing how to frame her reply, 'you have done me an honour, which--which I must, however, decline.' 'Just now, perhaps; but--but in time, dearest Clare?' 'Your sister may call me that; but to you I am Miss Collingwood.' 'Shall I ever get beyond that?' he urged, in a soft tone. 'I do not know,' murmured Clare, doubtfully; for she knew what her father wished and expected of her; 'but as yet let us be friends as we have been, and not talk of marriage, I implore you.' 'Deuced odd!' thought the Major, who, perhaps, felt relieved in his mind. Clare knew well the calm, half-passionless, and _insouciant_ world of the Major and his 'set,' her own 'set' too; she was not surprised; she had ere now expected some such declaration or proposal as this from Desmond; but certainly, with all his inanity, and perhaps stupidity, she expected it to be made in other terms, and with more ardour and earnestness; and at the moment he spoke her memory flashed back to the same moonlight night of which Trevor Chute had thought and remembered so vividly when he parted from her father but a few hours before. While Desmond was considering what to say next, it chanced that Clare drew her handkerchief from the Marguerite pouch, and with it the note, which fell at the feet of her visitor. Ere she was aware, he had picked it up, and saw that it was addressed to _Trevor Chute_. With a greater sense of irritation, pique, and even jealousy than he thought himself capable of feeling--certainly than ever he felt before--he presented it to her, saying blandly: 'You have dropped a note, Miss Collingwood--addressed to some one at the "Rag," I think.' 'Oh, thanks,' she replied in a voice with the slightest tinge of alarm and annoyance. 'Have you many correspondents there?' he ventured to ask, with the slightest approach to a sneer, as he placed his glass in his eye. 'Only one,' replied Clare, now thoroughly irritated. 'Captain Chute--Trevor Chute--perhaps you have heard of him.' 'Yes; does Sir Carnaby know of this correspondence?' 'No,' she replied, a little defiantly.