FLORAL CONVERSATION. 53 
Then others joined them, and they went their way. I 
stayed there, mute and motionless, thinking what cruel 
tyranny it was to crush those young loving hearts, until a 
footman came to say that the ball was over ; and then I 
hurried home, weary and sorrowful ; and I remember that 
before I went to bed that night I prayed that she might 
send him the leaf. But Mrs. Oldacre, from whom I never 
had a secret, declined to regard the circumstances as be¬ 
coming subjects for doubt or petition. She sniffed at my 
solicitude with a grand disdain, “because I know," she 
said, “ that he will have the leaf.” 
Of course, we kept the secret sacredly ; but Phyllis, my 
wife’s sister, and maid to the Lady Alice, seemed to us to 
know as much as we did. She was ever sounding the 
Captain’s praise, or speaking of his rival in anything but 
respectful terms, alluding to him as “that galvanised 
mummy,” and expressing her belief that he had been 
placed as a boy in a petrifying well, and been imprudently 
taken out before the process was complete. “ And though 
I dare not speak my mind to his lordship,” she said, “ I 
have had the pleasure of telling his valet that we don’t 
intend to marry a snow man.” 
Nevertheless, we heard, to our great unhappiness, that 
the wedding-day was fixed. The announcement was pain- 
