'Now, Mrs Selwyn, please tell me to what I owe this unexpected and pleasant visit?'

Mrs Selwyn looked at Fanny and smiled. Fanny returned the look and did not smile; on the contrary, she looked rather put out.

'Well! Captain Devereaux, I, that is Fanny and I, have a crow to pluck with you. What made you send Dr Lavie on a wooing errand to my house?'

'I never sent him at all, Mrs Selwyn.'

'Then he told me an untruth for he certainly told Colonel Selwyn and me that you had sent him to ask permission to pay his addresses to Fanny.'

'Well,' I said, 'there is just this much truth in that assertion, Mrs Selwyn, and I will tell you just what took place between Lavie and me this morning. I was sitting on the verandah outside here when he came looking the picture of misery and woe. For some time he would not tell me what was the matter with him but he sat and held his head in his hands and sighed and groaned in the most dismal manner. At last he said that he loved Miss Selwyn.'

Both Mrs Selwyn and Fanny here burst out with merry laughter, Fanny's being sweet, silvery and hearty. There was no unkind ring to it but it was evident that she was greatly amused.

'Yes! and then!'

I said that was no reason to be so miserable and he said, 'But she wouldn't walk to church with me last Sunday evening.'

'The fool!' cried Fanny, again going off into another merry peal.

'That is what I thought, too. I had a long talk with him and asked him did Miss Selwyn know of his feelings towards her? He said he expected she did. I asked him had he spoken to her? He said no. Well, I said, if you have not done that yet you had better do so as soon as possible and not go imagining all kinds of things. But he seemed to be frightened at the idea. At last I suggested that at least he might see you, Mrs Selwyn, and the colonel and see if you approved of his proposal. The fact was I did not know what to do with him. He acted on my hint and went and apparently received a satisfactory reply for he seemed much relieved when he came back to me.

For a moment or two neither of the two ladies spoke. Fanny looked at me half-reproachfully; Mrs Selwyn was evidently cogitating something. My prick, no longer interested in Fanny's cunt and the current of its thoughts recalled from Louie's sweet secret charms, had begun to drop a bit and I waited to hear the next thing.

'Well! Neither Colonel Selwyn nor I would object to Dr Lavie. He is a nice fellow, a thorough gentleman, and no one could have been more attentive or kinder than he was to poor Amy when she was ill after the attack of those horrid Afghans at Cherat, but then both Colonel Selwyn and I think it only right and fair to let Fanny choose for herself. We cannot bring ourselves to advise her at all. Anybody may come forward as a suitor so long as he is a gentleman and has sufficient means to keep a wife, so far as we parents are concerned. So Fanny must speak for herself in this matter.

I looked enquiringly at Fanny who coloured a little and then turned pale whilst the movements of her lovely breasts showed that some thoughts, perhaps not pleasant ones, were agitating her.

'All I can say at present,' said she speaking slowly and deliberately, 'is that I find he is not the man I can marry!' She laid some little stress on the word marry.

'Perhaps,' said I, 'when you consider Dr Lavie you may grow to think him eligible, Miss Fanny.'

'I don't think so,' said she, 'I like Dr Lavie well enough as a friend but I do not feel as though I could ever love him and I could never have a man unless I loved him.'

Well, give him a chance,' said I. 'Hear what he has to say and perhaps when you examine him from the point of view he desires you may see more in him than you do now.'

'I suppose,' said she a little sharply, 'you would be delighted to see me take him, Captain Devereaux.'

'I would if I were sure you would be happy with him, Miss Selwyn, but not otherwise. Lavie is a great friend of mine and I know him to be a real good fellow. I think he is a little off his head just now but when I look at you I am not surprised. Is not Fanny looking really very pretty, Mrs Selwyn?'

Both mother and daughter looked as pleased as could be at this compliment, but it was not said merely to please for Fanny did really look uncommonly lovely and I had spoken the words quite unaffectedly and spontaneously.

'I have often wondered,' I continued 'that Fanny has not been snapped up long ago! Such a pretty girl, a girl so nice, so desirable in every way, should by this time have had a great number of adorers and several offers of marriage. I cannot make out where the men's eyes are.'

'Oh, Fanny can tell you, if she likes,' responded the mother, 'that she has had two or three offers. There was one gentleman in particular who was very much in earnest – a Dr Jardine – who on the march down proposed to her.'

'Dr Jardine!' I exclaimed.

'Yes! He asked Fanny but she said no and then he asked the colonel and me to try to persuade her to take him but we told him we objected to such a course and if Fanny said no it meant no as far as we were concerned.'

'I am glad Fanny did not say yes,' I replied.

'Why?'

'Because Dr Jardine might be a clever doctor but he is a bad man and quite unsuitable for Fanny in every way. At least that is my opinion.'

'I think so too,' said Mrs Selwyn decisively. 'Still if Fanny had said yes we should not have declined though we might have been grieved she should wish for such a man as Dr Jardine.'

'What made you marry, Captain Devereaux?' suddenly cried Fanny.

'My dear child! What a question to ask!' exclaimed Mrs Selwyn.

'I married,' said I laughing, 'because I had at last found the girl I fancied; the girl, in fact, who seemed to me to be altogether superior to any I had seen in my life and the one I fell really and truly in love with.'

'And I suppose,' said Fanny, trying to seem cheerful, 'that you have never seen anyone since whom you would have married had you not met your wife first?'

The question was too plain to me and for the life of me I could not resist giving the answer which I knew she wanted but which the tone of her voice told me she did not expect.

'I can easily and truly answer your question, Miss Selwyn. It is true I am not easily pleased but I have seen one lady since I married whom I should have asked to marry me had I not already been married,' and my eyes told Fanny who that lady was.

The colour again mounted in profusion to her lovely face, her eyes glistened and shone with satisfaction; she looked at me from head to foot and her entire appearance told me, 'Had you asked me I would have said yes and the sooner the better!'

Poor Lavie. I saw now only too well that he was right and whomever it was that Fanny loved it was not him. A secret satisfaction filled my soul and a flood of voluptuous desire came over me as I again ran my eyes over Fanny's graceful form and charming appearance and my slumbering prick once more swelled and swelled until I thought it would burst the buttons and spring out to frighten the mother and daughter.

I saw Fanny and her mother halfway home and the way Fanny pressed the moist palm of her hand in mine sent a thrill through both of us and I could see that she had quite made up her mind to have me at the earliest opportunity. By God! How my balls and groins did ache all that day.