Everybody talked to her as if she were engaged to Smithson, and those poor, ignorant vicarage girls used to write her long letters of congratulation, envying her good fortune, speculating, about what she would do when she was married. What can be your motive in refusing one of the very best matches of the season--or of ever so many seasons? Smithson Sir George's place in her box at the Gaiety that evening, and had invited him to supper in Arlington Street afterwards. She was gay enough at the Ranelagh, and looked her loveliest at a dinner party that evening, and went to three parties after the dinner, and went home in the faint light of early morning, after sitting out a late waltz in a balcony with Mr. Dear grandmother, I believe you are beginning to love me,' she said, bending over to arrange the invalid's pillows in the July morning, the fresh accepting credit cards equipment air blowing in upon old and young from the great open window, like a caress. But it was a noble room, and in her studious hours Mary loved to sit here, walled round with books, and able to consult or dip into as many volumes as she liked.
They are paste, of course--very beautiful for people who like that kind of thing--but I don't. If you think _I_ am the person to be congratulated, you are at liberty to do so. He had a fine baritone, very low and subdued, and had a languor which was almost insolent, but not without its charm.