"It's my belief," said the Dean, getting up and walking out of the room in great anger, "that Sir Francis Geraldine will never marry Miss Altifiorla." "I don't think my brother will ever marry Miss Altifiorla," said Mrs. Dean. "He is very silly and very vicious, but I don't think he'll ever do anything so bad as that." "Poor Miss Altifiorla!" said Mrs. Thorne afterwards to her Aunt Forrester. That same evening Miss Altifiorla, feeling that she had broken the ice, and, oppressed by the weight of the secret which was a secret still in every house in Exeter except the Deanery, wrote to her other friend Mrs. Green, and begged her to come down. She had tidings to tell of the greatest importance. So Mrs. Green put on her bonnet and came down. "My dear," said Miss Altifiorla, "I have something to tell you. I am going to be--" "Not married!" said Mrs. Green. "Yes, I am. How very odd that you should guess. But yet when I come to think of it I don't know that it is odd. Because after all there does come a time in,--a lady's life when it is probable that she will marry." Miss Altifiorla hesitated, having in the first instance desired to use the word girl. "That's as may be," said Mrs. Green. "Your principles used to be on the other side." "Of course all that changes when the opportunity comes. It wasn't so much that I disliked the idea of marriage, for myself, as that I was proud of the freedom which I enjoyed. However that is all over. I am free no longer." "And who is it to be?" "Ah, who is it to be? Can you make a guess?" "Not in the least. I don't know of anybody who has been spooning you." "Oh, what a term to use! No one can say that anyone ever--spooned me. It is a horrible word. And I cannot bear to hear it fall from my own lips." "It is what young men do do," said Mrs. Green. "That I think depends on the rank in life which the young men occupy;--and also the young women. I can understand that a Bank clerk should do it to an attorney's daughter." "Well; who is it you are going to marry without spooning, which in my vocabulary is simply another word for two young people being fond of each other?" Miss Altifiorla remained silent for a while, feeling that she owed it to herself to awe her present companion by her manner before she should crush her altogether by the weight of the name she would have to pronounce. Mrs. Green had received her communication flippantly, and had probably felt that her friend intended to demean herself by some mere common marriage. "Who is to be the happy swain?" asked Mrs. Green. "Swain!" said Miss Altifiorla, unable to repress her feelings. "Well; lover, young man, suitor, husband as is to be. Some word common on such occasion will I suppose fit him?"