"We shall go to Paris to-night," she said triumphantly, "and afterwards to Italy. _Bien entendu_, you do not wish to tease me any more, Harry. It is all over, is it not--this gloomy England and all the sad people? I shall never see them any more, shall I?"
He laughed loudly, so that many in the room turned their heads to look at him.
"But, Maryska," he rejoined, "we're not married yet, my dear. How can I take you to Italy when we are not married?"
She thought upon this, her pretty head poised upon her hand. For herself that would have been no obstacle at all, for had not _he_ said that marriage was something which the priests did to keep the wolf from the door? Harry, however, must be considered, and for his sake she would think about it.
"You shall pay the priest and he will marry us," she said at length. "Show him the money and he will not turn us away. It is not necessary to show him too much at the commencement. Afterwards you can put more upon the table, and he will see it. That is what my father did when his friend, the Abbé of Dijon, wished that I should be confirmed. He wanted to paint a picture in the church there, and he said that it did not matter a damn one way or the other. So, you see, it can be done, Harry; and what you can do in Dijon, you can do in England. Go to the priest and learn if I am not wise."
"Oh!" he cried, laughing as he raised his glass, "you are the last word in originals, and that's sure! Don't you know that there are twenty things to be done before people can be married in England? It's almost easier to get hanged. No priest would marry us unless he had a license, Maryska. I suppose I can get a special in two or three days, but we shall want all that. Meanwhile, had you not really better go back to Hampstead?"
Her spirits fell. The rose-bud of a mouth drooped pathetically. She did not believe a word of it, and was driven to the thought that he renounced her after all! Thus she came upon the borderland of a scene even in the dining-room of the great hotel, while he shrank in despair from the task of persuading her.
"I will never go back to Hampstead; I will throw myself into the sea first!"
"Don't talk rot, Maryska. You know I want to do the best I can for you."