"Oh, you admire the
lady, eh?" he said. "Well, there is no accounting for tastes."
"You surprise me slightly," said the earl, in response to this remark.
"The lady is certainly worthy of any man's admiration. She is refined,
cultivated, beautiful, and----"
"Ahem!" said Terwilliger. "May I ask, my dear Earl, to whom you refer?"
"To Ariadne, of course. I thought your course somewhat unusual, but we do
not pretend to comprehend you Americans over here. Your proposition is
that I shall marry Ariadne?"
I hesitate to place on record what Terwilliger said in answer to this
statement. It was forcible rather than polite, and the earl from that
moment adopted a new simile for degrees of profanity, substituting "to
swear like an American" for the old forms having to do with pirates and
troopers. The string of expletives was about five minutes in length, at
the end of which time Terwilliger managed to say:
"No such d---- proposition ever entered my mind. I want you to marry a
cold, misty, musty spectre, nothing more or less, and I'll tell you why.
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