Now it is obvious that in nine cases out of ten there is only one
circumstance over whom a vigorous young man has no control, and this
circumstance wears petticoats. Hitherto I had not seriously connected
Robin with the tender passion, and this sudden intimation that the most
serious-minded and ambitious of young men is not immune from the same
rather startled me.
The female members of my establishment were pleasantly fluttered, though
they were concerned less with the lady's existence than with her
identity.
"Who do you think she is?" inquired Kitty of me, the first time the
subject cropped up between us.
"Don't know, I'm sure," I murmured. I was smoking my post-prandial cigar
at the time, at peace with all the world. "Never had the privilege of
seeing his visiting-list."
"I wonder who she can be," continued my wife. "He--he hasn't said
anything to you, has he, dear?" she inquired, in a tentative voice.
I slowly opened one of my hitherto closed eyes, and cocked it
suspiciously at the diplomatist sitting opposite to me. (The Twins and
Robin were out at the theatre.) Then, observing that she was stealthily
regarding me through her eyelashes--a detestable trick which some women
have--I solemnly agitated my eyelid some three or four times and gently
closed it again.
"Has he confided any of his love affairs to you, I mean?" continued
Kitty, quite unabashed.
"If you eat any more chocolates you will make yourself sick," I
observed.
"Yes, dear," said my wife submissively, pushing away the bon-bon dish.
"But has he?"
"Are you trying to pump me?"
"Oh, gracious, no! What would be the good? I only asked a plain
question. You men are such creatures for screening each other, though,
that it's never any use asking a man anything about another man."
"True for you. As a matter of fact, Robin has hardly said a word to me
on the subject of women since first I met him."
Kitty thoughtfully cracked a filbert with her teeth--an unladylike habit
about which I have often spoken to her--and said--
"What exciting chats you must have!" Then she added reflectively--
"I expect it's a girl in Scotland. A sort of Highland lassie, in a kilt,
or whatever female Highlanders wear."
"Why should a novel about the Stock Exchange 'owe its inception' to a
Highland lassie?"
Kitty took another filbert.
"That's 'vurry bright' of you, Adrian, as that American girl used to
say. There's something in that. (Yes, I know you don't like it, dear,
but I love doing it. I'll pour you out another glass of port. There!)
But any idiotic excuse is good enough for a man in love. Has he ever
been sentimental with you--quoted poetry, or anything?"
"N-no. Stop, though! He did once quote Burns to me, but that was _à
propos_ of poetry in general, not of love-making."
I remembered the incident well. Robin had picked up at a bookstall a
copy of an early and quite valuable edition of Burns' poems. He had sat
smoking with me in the library late the same night, turning over the
pages of the tattered volume, and quoting bits, in broad vernacular,
from "Tam o' Shanter" and "The Cottar's Saturday Night." Suddenly he
began, almost to himself--
"O, my love is like a red, red rose,
That's newly sprung in June;
My love is like a melody
That's sweetly played in tune.
As fair art thou, my bonnie lass,
So deep in love am I----"
He broke off for a moment, and I remembered how he glowered ecstatically
into the fire. Then he concluded--
"And I will love thee still, my dear,
Till a' the seas gang dry."
"Man," he said, "that's fine! That's poetry. That's the real thing!"
I had agreed. It is no use arguing with a Scot about Burns. (I remember
once being nearly dirked at a Caledonian Dinner because I ventured to
remark that "before ye" was not in my opinion a good rhyme to "Loch
Lomond.")
However, Kitty and I were unable to decide whether Robin's "bonnie lass"
on that occasion had been a personality or an abstraction.
"Mightn't it be one of the Twins?" I remarked.
"Well, it _might_ be," admitted Kitty judicially, "but he has kept it
very close if it is. No," she continued more decidedly, "I don't think
it can be. They are quite out of his line. Besides--it would be too
absurd!"
It was not one Twin at any rate, for a fortnight later Dilly sprung upon
us the third surprise of the series I have mentioned. She announced that
she had decided to marry Dicky Lever.
There was, I suppose, nothing very surprising in that. Dicky had been in
constant attendance upon the Twins for nearly two years, and had long
since graduated into the ranks of the Good Sorts. The surprise to
us--rather unreasonably, perhaps--lay in the fact of--