The pair, aged slightly under and slightly over forty, seemed to hover
for a fraction of a second uncertainly near each other, and then,
somehow, mysteriously, Simon Loggerheads had kissed Mary Morfe. She
blushed. He blushed. The kiss was repeated. Mary gazed up at him. Mary
could scarcely believe that he was hers. She could scarcely believe that
on the previous evening he had proposed marriage to her--rather
suddenly, so it seemed to her, but delightfully. She could comprehend
his conduct no better than her own. They two, staid, settled-down, both
of them "old maids," falling in love and behaving like lunatics! Mary, a
year ago, would have been ready to prophesy that if ever Simon
Loggerheads--at his age!--did marry, he would assuredly marry something
young, something ingenuous, something cream-and-rose, and probably
something with rich parents. For twenty years Simon Loggerheads had been
marked down for capture by the marriageable spinsters and widows, and
the mothers with daughters, of Bursley. And he had evaded capture,
despite the special temptations to which an after-dinner tenor is
necessarily subject. And now Mary Morfe had caught him--caught him,
moreover, without having had the slightest intention of catching him.
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