After what we have both said to-night, we can no longer deceive ourselves by words. … Peter," she broke off suddenly, "I am going to ask you a question, and on your answer my fate—and yours too, perhaps—will depend! Tell me truthfully. …" Her voice failed her for the moment, as she bent over towards him, and clutched his arm tightly in her excitement; her eyes shone with a wild, intense eagerness for his reply. … "Would you—" she repeated. …
"Would you have the bottle-jack all brass, or japanned? The brass ones are a shilling more."
Peter gave a violent start, for the voice in which this most incongruous and irrelevant question was put was that of Sophia!
Miss Davenport with her hysterical appeal, the steamer-chairs, and the starlight, all had fled, and he stood, supporting himself limply by the arm of the chimney-nook in the upholsterer's showroom, staring at Sophia, who stood there, sedate and practical, inviting his attention to a couple of bottle-jacks which an assistant was displaying with an obsequious smile: the transition was rather an abrupt one.
