“No, no! come, you must confess that you feel more comfortable now that you have been married correctly.” “Not a bit,” he said, “and whilst I live I shall always say it was superfluous.” “By the way,” said I, halting as I was moving off, as though arrested by an afterthought: “you might tell Conny when you see her that I am engaged to be married.” “Really!” “Yes, my cousin Theresa has done me the honour to accept me. The news will interest your wife.” “And delight her too,” said Curling, “for she still worries now and then over the trick we were unavoidably----” “Tell her to forget everything as I have,” I interrupted quickly, for I never could stand any reference to that trick from him. “She has nothing to forget so far as I am concerned, as I hope my engagement proves.” And I left the bank. I found Theresa alone--my aunt having been seized with an auspicious fit of tenderness which had driven her (in her carriage) to her daughter’s lodgings. “It seems that I was destined to make love to you,” said I; “for I am perpetually finding you by yourself all alone, as the song says, and opportunity creates the thief.” “I can hardly believe we are engaged,” she answered. “We have, I fear, both been too hasty--you in proposing, I in accepting you.” “If you mean to imitate Conny, I had better withdraw to my bed-room and cut my gorge. What! accept me, and then break into lamentations?” “_I_ can be true,” said she, firmly and proudly, “and do not speak of myself. But----” There was only one way of silencing her buts, and that was by stopping her mouth. I leave you to guess how I did it. There was a vast deal of blushing, tender charges of sauciness, assumptions of indignation which the eyes vowed were terrible hypocrisies, and---- But, my Eugenio, even were love-making not an amusement in which no breathing creature can take the faintest interest, save those who are concerned in it, still ought I, and do I, politely but firmly decline to set down the particulars of that dear, delightful morning. The very respectable fear of growing sentimental is one check; but another and a more violent restraint is that profound sense of what d’ye call it? with which most men recur to the nonsense they are forced to emit when the fit is on them. However, I ought not to conceal that our conversation brought out some little secrets of great value and moment to me; of which one was the assurance that she had fallen in love with me before I left Thistlewood. “I never suspected it,” said I. “I don’t think,” she whispered, “that I should have been so easily conquered had I not been resolved to atone for the cruel reception I gave you, and the wicked story I told O’Twist.” “You tried to harden your heart,” said I; “but the process that ought to have made iron of it transformed it into wax.” “I suppose so. I am a silly creature.”