"What can you be thinking of? He only offered himself at
five!"
"Of course--of course--" stammered Lethbury--"but nowadays people
marry after such short engagements--"
"Engagement!" said his wife solemnly. "There is no engagement."
Lethbury dropped his cigar. "What on earth do you mean?"
"Jane is thinking it over."
_"Thinking it over?"_ "She has asked for a month before deciding."
Lethbury sank back with a gasp. Was it genius or was it madness? He
felt incompetent to decide; and Mrs. Lethbury's next words showed
that she shared his difficulty.
"Of course I don't want to hurry Jane--"
"Of course not," he acquiesced.
"But I pointed out to her that a young man of Mr. Budd's impulsive
temperament might--might be easily discouraged--"
"Yes; and what did she say?"
"She said that if she was worth winning she was worth waiting for."
VI
The period of Mr. Budd's probation could scarcely have cost him as
much mental anguish as it caused his would-be parents-in-law.
Mrs. Lethbury, by various ruses, tried to shorten the ordeal, but
Jane remained inexorable; and each morning Lethbury came down to
breakfast with the certainty of finding a letter of withdrawal from
her discouraged suitor.
When at length the decisive day came, and Mrs. Lethbury, at its
close, stole into the library with an air of chastened joy, they
stood for a moment without speaking; then Mrs. Lethbury paid a
fitting tribute to the proprieties by faltering out: "It will be
dreadful to have to give her up--"
Lethbury could not repress a warning gesture; but even as it escaped
him, he realized that his wife's grief was genuine.
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