"You know everything," said Allan, smiling. "I was thinking of somebody."
Miss Milroy stole a glance at him--a glance of gentle encouragement. There could be but one human creature in Mr. Armadale's mind after what had passed between them that morning! It would be only an act of mercy to take him back again at once to the interrupted conversation of a few hours since on the subject of names.
"I have been thinking of somebody, too," she said, half-inviting, half-repelling the coming avowal. "If I tell you the first letter of my Somebody's name, will you tell me the first letter of yours?"
"I will tell you anything you like," rejoined Allan, with the utmost enthusiasm.
She still shrank coquettishly from the very subject that she wanted to approach. "Tell me your letter first," she said, in low tones, looking away from him.
Allan laughed. "M," he said, "is my first letter."
She started a little. Strange that he should be thinking of her by her surname instead of her Christian name; but it mattered little as long as he was thinking of her.
"What is your letter?" asked Allan.
She blushed and smiled. "A--if you will have it!" she answered, in a reluctant little whisper. She stole another look at him, and luxuriously protracted her enjoyment of the coming avowal once more. "How many syllables is the name in?" she asked, drawing patterns shyly on the ground with the end of the parasol.
No man with the slightest knowledge of the sex would have been rash enough, in Allan's position, to tell her the truth. Allan, who knew nothing whatever of woman's natures, and who told the truth right and left in all mortal emergencies, answered as if he had been under examination in a court of justice.
"It's a name in three syllables," he said.
Miss Milroy's downcast eyes flashed up at him like lightning. "Three!" she repeated in the blankest astonishment.
Allan was too inveterately straightforward to take the warning even now. "I'm not strong at my spelling, I know," he said, with his lighthearted laugh. "But I don't think I'm wrong, in calling Midwinter a name in three syllables. I was thinking of my friend; but never mind my thoughts. Tell me who A is--tell me whom you were thinking of?"
"Of the first letter of the alphabet, Mr. Armadale, and I beg positively to inform you of nothing more!"
With that annihilating answer the major's daughter put up her parasol and walked back by herself to the boat.