He has had no unkindly intention in the last words, but the moment that these are out of his mouth, a glance at Amelia's unblooming face and unyouthful figure tell him that they were not happily chosen. At the first instant that the suggestion of an immediate marriage reaches the hearer's brain, it sends a dart of joy over her features. To be married at once! To put an end for ever to the interminable waiting, to enter at last--at last upon the possession of the so long deferred Canaan. But in a second, that first bright flash is chased away, and gives place to a look of almost humiliation. "You must be making fun of me, to suggest such a thing!" she says in a wounded voice; "you know how wildly impossible it would be that I should leave them all--my father--Sybilla--without any preparation." "Without any preparation!" replies Jim, raising his eyebrows. "Have not you been preparing them for the last eight years?" He feels a vague unjust irritation with her for opposing his proposition, though deep down in his heart he knows that he would have felt a much greater annoyance had she eagerly closed with it. As she does not answer a question, which the moment that it is uttered he feels to have been rather brutal, he goes on, against his will, in the same sarcastic key: "I am afraid that you will have to leave them all some day; I am afraid that our Bayswater mansion--by-the-bye, I am sure it will not be a mansion, for I am sure it will not have a back-door--will not be likely to contain all. Your father--Sybilla--Sybilla and her physic bottles take up a good deal of room, do not they?" It is fortunate for Amelia that she is too preoccupied by the thought of her own next speech to take in the full acerbity of the last remark. "If you would consent to wait till we get home--father does not mean to stay in Italy beyond the end of next month--we might be married in June; that" (with a pink flush of happiness) "would not be so long to wait." In a second a sum of the simplest description executes itself in Burgoyne's head. It is now the second week of April; they are to be married in June, he has then eight weeks left. It shocks himself to find that this is the way in which he puts it. All the overt action that he permits himself, however, is to say with a shrug: "As you will, then, as you will!" adding, since he feels that there is something discourteous even to unchivalry in so bald an acquiescence in his prospective bliss, "Of course, dear, the sooner I get you the better for me!" No lover could have been overheard giving utterance to a more proper or suitable sentiment; so that it is lucky that this is just the moment that Cecilia chooses for entering.