The Hollow

"I'm suggesting that you should maiW me. Midge. I don't suppose that I'm a v^y romantic proposition. I'm a dull dog, I knc^ that, and not much good at anything-I just read books and potter around. But although I'm not a very exciting person, we've knov^11 each other a long time and I think that Air^" wick itself would-well, would compensate I think you'd be happy at Ainswick, Midge.

Will you come?"

Midge swallowed once or twice-then she said:

"But I thought-Henrietta-" and stopped.

Edward said, his voice level and unemotional:

"Yes, I've asked Henrietta three times to marry me. Each time she has refused. Henrietta knows what she doesn't want."

There was a silence, and then Edward said:

"Well, Midge dear, what about it?"

Midge looked up at him. There was a catch in her voice. She said:

"It seems so extraordinary-to be offered heaven on a plate as it were, at the Berkeley!"

His face lighted up. He laid his hand over hers for a brief moment.

"Heaven on a plate," he said. "So you feel like that about Ainswick… Oh, Midge, I'm glad."

They sat there happily. Edward paid the bill and added an enormous tip.

The people in the restaurant were thinning out. Midge said with an effort:

"We'll have to go…1 suppose I'd better go back to Madame Alfrege. After all, she's counting on me. I can't just walk out."

"No, I suppose you'll have to go back and resign, or hand in your notice, or whatever you call it. You're not to go on working there, though. I won't have it. But first I thought we'd better go to one of those shops in Bond Street where they sell rings."

"Rings?"

"It's usual, isn't it?"

Midge laughed.

In the dimmed lighting of the jeweller's shop. Midge and Edward bent over trays of sparkling engagement rings, whilst a discreet salesman watched them benignantly.

Edward said, pushing away a velvet-covered tray:

"Not emeralds."

Henrietta in green tweeds-Henrietta in an evening dress like Chinese jade…

No, not emeralds…

Midge pushed away the tiny stabbing pain at her heart.

"Choose for me," she said to Edward.

He bent over the tray before them. He picked out a ring with a single diamond. Not a very large stone, but a stone of beautiful colour and fire.

"I like this."

Midge nodded. She loved this display of

Edward's unerring and fastidious taste.

She slipped it on her finger as Edward and the shopman drew aside.

Edward wrote out a check for three hundred and forty-two pounds and came back to Midge smiling.

He said, "Let's go and be rude to Madame Alfrege…"

Chapter XXV

"But, darlings, I am so delighted!"

Lady Angkatell stretched out a fragile hand to Edward and touched Midge softly with the other.

"You did quite right, Edward, to make her leave that horrid shop and to bring her right down here. She'll stay here, of course, and be married from here-St. George's, you know, three miles by the road, though only a mile through the woods, but then one doesn't go to a wedding through woods. And I suppose it will have to be the Vicar-poor man, he has such dreadful colds in the head every Autumn-the Curate, now, has one of those high Anglican voices, and the whole thing would be far more impressive-and more religious, too, if you know what I mean. It is so hard to keep one's mind reverent when somebody is saying things through the nose."

It was. Midge decided, a very Lucyish reception. It made her want to both laugh and cry.

"I'd love to be married from here, Lucy," she said.

"Then that's settled, darling. Off-white satin, I think, and an ivory prayer book- not a bouquet. Bridesmaids?",« "No. I don't want a fuss. Just a very quiet wedding."

"I know what you mean, darling-and I think perhaps you are right. With an Autumn wedding it's nearly always chrysanthemums-such an uninspiring flower, I always think. And unless one takes a lot of time to choose them carefully, bridesmaids never match properly and there's nearly always one terribly plain one who ruins the whole effect-but one has to have her because she's usually the bridegroom's sister.

But, of course-" Lady Angkatell beamed.

"Edward hasn't got any sisters."

"That seems to be one point in my favour," said Edward, smiling.

"But children are really the worst at weddings," went on Lady Angkatell, happily | pursuing her own train of thought. "Every- | one says 'How sweet!' but, my dear, the anxiety! They step on the train, or else they howl for Nannie, and quite often they're sick. I always wonder how a girl can go up the aisle in a proper frame of mind, while she's so uncertain about what is happening behind her."

"There needn't be anything behind me," said Midge cheerfully. "Not even a train. I can be married in a coat and skirt."

"Oh, no. Midge, that's so like a widow.

No, off-white satin and not from Madame

Alfrege's."

"Certainly not from Madame Alfrege's," said Edward.

"I shall take you to Mireille," said Lady Angkatell.

"My dear Lucy, I can't possibly afford

Mireille."