"Not at all," he said, a little abruptly; "something about a wedding present." Then a manservant entered with a tray of champagne and the menu card, and until she had been revived by the food she forced herself to eat, and the champagne Vansittart insisted upon her drinking, she asked no more. But, in her strained state, her lover’s pre-occupation was unbearable. Desperate, she determined to know the worst. "Tell me," she began, leaning her fair elbow on the table and looking pleadingly into his face with those bewilderingly beautiful eyes. "You know you yourself proposed we should share our secrets. And, from your manner, I know--I am positive--the duke said something more than about a wedding present." "If he did, it was nothing of any consequence," he fondly returned, gazing tenderly at the lovely face which was his whole world. "I would tell you at once, only you are such a sweet, innocent, sensitive darling, so utterly unsophisticated, unused to this rough planet and its still rougher inhabitants--you would make a mountain of what is far less than a mole-hill in one’s way." "What is it?’ I would rather, really I would, know." She gave him a coaxing glance. "Well, it is this," he replied, hardly. "Very little to annoy one. Only I am so absurdly vulnerable, that the merest breath which affects the subject of our marriage seems to shrivel me up. It is those wretched clubs; at least, the miserable gossip which the riffraff of the clubs seem to batten and fatten upon, drivelling, disappointed, soured units of humanity that they are! They seem to be prognosticating that our wedding will not ’take place,’ because I have a secret wife somewhere, who is likely to turn up. Do you suspect me, darling?" Her joyous laugh, born of infinite relief, almost startled him. When he reached his bachelor domain that night, and recalled the events of the evening, the sweetest delight of all was to remember how his beautiful darling took his hands, and with eyes brimming with love, drew him to her and nestled in his arms as some faithful dove might have flown confidently to his shoulder. That ensuing brief--all too brief--half hour, when, by their world seemingly forgot, and certainly their world forgetting, they interchanged tender words and still tenderer embraces, seemed to his passion-stricken nature to have so riveted them to each other that the very machinations of hell itself bid fair to be powerless to part them.