"I
say, Beauty, were you ever near doing anything serious--asking anybody
to marry you, eh? I suppose you have been--they do make such awful hard
running on one" and the poor hunted Seraph stretched his magnificent
limbs with the sigh of a martyred innocent.
"I was once--only once!"
"Ah, by Jove! And what saved you?"
The Seraph lifted himself a little, with a sort of pitying, sympathizing
curiosity toward a fellow-sufferer.
"Well, I'll tell you," said Bertie, with a sigh as of a man who hated
long sentences, and who was about to plunge into a painful past. "It's
ages ago; day I was at a Drawing room; year Blue Ruin won the Clearwell
for Royal, I think. Wedged up there, in that poking place, I saw such a
face--the deuce, it almost makes me feel enthusiastic now. She was just
out--an angel with a train! She had delicious eyes--like a spaniel's you
know--a cheek like this peach, and lips like that strawberry there, on
the top of your ice. She looked at me, and I was in love! I knew who she
was--Irish lord's daughter--girl I could have had for the asking; and I
vow that I thought I would ask her--I actually was as far gone as that;
I actually said to myself, I'd hang about her a week or two, and then
propose. You'll hardly believe it, but I did. Watched her presented;
such grace, such a smile, such a divine lift of the lashes. I was really
in love, and with a girl who would marry me! I was never so near a fatal
thing in my life----"
"Well?" asked the Seraph, pausing to listen till he let the ice in his
sherry-cobbler melt away.
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