“It was. And you very properly smothered her with a pillow as she slept and have come here to make your confession,” twinkled Gloria.
“Worse,” said Darcy in a small, tremulous voice. “Much worse.”
Gloria sat up straight. “No!” she cried hopefully.
“Yes. For Helen said, ‘Well, somebody in England seems pretty much interested in her, anyway.’ That’s what put it into my head.”
“I wish you’d put it; into mine,” said the other plaintively. “You don’t seem to get any nearer the subject of your romance, which is Man.”
“Well—promise not to laugh at me, Gloria!”
“Yes; and one evening when both of the girls were being just a little extra peacocky over their double wedding next October and letting me understand what a favor it was to me that I was to be double maid of honor, I just up and told ’em I didn’t know whether I could be as I had an important engagement to be married myself.”
“They jumped at the English letters. So I told them that I thought I might as well own up about the affair; how I’d met him on my vacation in Canada and helped him try out horses for the British Government, which had sent him over for that purpose when he was wounded, and we had corresponded ever since. It was awfully well done, if I do say it as shouldn’t.”
“You made him all up yourself, just on the basis of those war-office letters?”
“For Heaven’s sake, do be more explicit!”
“I’m t-t-trying to,” said Darcy brokenly. “I got him out of a book.”
“Darcy Cole; _what_ book did you get him out of?”
With one headlong plunge Gloria projected herself upon the couch where she wallowed ecstatically among the pillows.
“Oh, Darcy! Darcy!” she gasped when she could achieve coherent speech. “For this I shall love you forever. I’ll do more. I’ll adopt you. I’ll endow you. I’ll—I’ll canonize you. What’s his name?”
“Sir Montrose Veyze, Bart., of Veyze Holdings, Hampshire, England,” recited the girl formally.
Dissociating herself from a convulsed silk coverlet, Gloria straightened up. “Sir Montrose Veyze,” she repeated thoughtfully and relishingly. “Why that particular and titled gentleman?”
“I got to the V’s before I found any one that seemed to fill the bill.”
“What special qualification commended him to your favorable consideration, Miss Cole?”