Victor considered this. He had not thought his voice especially loud before, but otherwise her conditions seemed reasonable enough. She didn't want people to talk. Given how long she'd been of marriageable age, that was sort of cute. If anyone was going to talk, they could find plenty of leverage without taking any of his questions out of context. Indeed, at this point the knowledge that someone was asking her questions about marriage could only have helped her; he might bet that for most gentlemen in her acquaintance the terms marriage and Miss Dempsey no longer came up together in conversation.

"Well," he began, making an effort to lower his voice to meet her demands. "I don't know that you answered my earlier question. Surely you haven't spent however many years unable to find an intelligent man with a sense of humor. I admit there are some outside those criteria, but we're not exactly extinct."

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