about you double—treble—what you pay Augusta?” He saw her stretch out her hand to him, and went to her immediately. “You know I wouldn’t do anything you don’t like! Don’t look so distressed, dearest!”
She pressed his hand. “I know you wouldn’t. Don’t heed me! It is only that it shocked me a little to hear you speak so hardly. But no one has less cause to complain of hardness in you than I, my darling.”
“Nonsense!” he said, smiling down at her. “Keep your tedious cousin, love—but allow me to wish that you had with you someone who could entertain you better—enter into what interests you!”
“Well, I have Ianthe,” she reminded him. “She doesn’t precisely enter into my interests, but we go on very comfortably together.”
“I am happy to hear it. But it begins to seem as if you won’t have the doubtful comfort of her society for much longer.”
“My dear, if you are going to suggest that I should employ a second lady to keep me company, I do beg of you to spare your breath!”
“No, that wouldn’t answer.” He paused, and then said quite coolly: “I am thinking of getting married, Mama.”
She was taken so much by surprise that she could only stare at him. He had the reputation of being a dangerous flirt, but she had almost given up hope of his coming to the point of offering for any lady’s hand in matrimony. She had reason to think that he had had more than one mistress in keeping—very expensive Cythereans some of them had been if her sister were to be believed!—and it had begun to seem as if he preferred that way of life to a more ordered existence. Recovering from her stupefaction, she said: “My dear, this is very sudden!”
“Not so sudden as you think, Mama. I have been meaning for some time to speak to you about it.”
“Good gracious! And I never suspected it! Do, pray, sit down and tell me all about it!”
He looked at her keenly. “Would you be glad, Mama?”
“Of course I should!”
“Then I think that settles it.”
That made her laugh. “Of all the absurd things to say! Very well! having won my approval, tell me everything!”
He said, gazing frowningly into the fire: “I don’t know that there’s so much to tell you. I fancy you guessed I haven’t much cared for the notion of becoming riveted. I never met the female to whom I wished to be leg- shackled. Harry did, and if anything had been needed to confirm me in—”
“My dear, leave that!” she interposed. “Harry was happy in his marriage, remember! I believe, too, that although Ianthe’s feelings are not profound she was most sincerely attached to him.”
“So much attached to him that within a year of his death she was pining for the sight of a ballroom, and within four is planning to marry a worthless fribble! It will not do, Mama!”
“Very well, my dear, but we are talking of your marriage, not Harry’s, are we not?”
“True! Well, I realized—oh, above a year ago!—that it was my duty to marry. Not so much for the sake of an heir, because I have one already, but—”
“Sylvester, don’t put that thought into Edmund’s head!”
He laughed. “Much he would care! His ambition is to become a mail-coachman—or it was until Keighley let him have the yard of tin for a plaything! Now he cannot decide whether to be a coachman or a guard. Pretty flat he would think it to be told that he would be obliged instead to step into my shoes!”
She smiled. “Yes,
“Well, that’s one of my reasons, Mama. If I mean to marry I ought, I think, to do so before Edmund is old enough to think his nose has been put out of joint. So I began some months ago to look about me.”
“You are the oddest creature! Next you will tell me you made out a list of the qualities your wife must possess!”
“More or less,” he admitted. “You may laugh, Mama, but you’ll agree that certain qualities are indispensable! She must be well-born, for instance. I don’t mean necessarily a great match, but a girl of my own order.”
“Ah, yes, I agree with
“Well, a year ago I should have said she must be beautiful,” he replied meditatively. (She is not a beauty, thought the Duchess.) “But I’m inclined to think now that it is more important that she should be intelligent. I don’t think I could tolerate a hen-witted wife. Besides, I don’t mean to foist another fool on to you.”
“I am very much obliged to you!” she said, a good deal entertained. “Clever, but not beautiful: very well! Continue!”
“No, some degree of beauty I do demand. She must have countenance, at least, and the sort of elegance which you have, Mama.”
“Don’t try to turn my head, you flatterer! Have you discovered among the debutantes one who is endowed with all these qualities?”
“At first glance, I suppose a dozen, but in the end only five.”
“Five!”
“Well, only five with whom I could perhaps bear to spend a large part of my life. There is Lady Jane Saxby: she’s pretty, and good-natured. Then there’s Barningham’s daughter: she has a great deal of vivacity. Miss Bellerby is a handsome girl, with a little reserve, which I don’t dislike. Lady Mary Torrington—oh, a diamond of the first water! And lastly Miss Orton: not beautiful, but quite taking, and has agreeable manners.” He paused, his gaze still fixed on the smouldering logs. The Duchess waited expectantly. He looked up presently, and smiled at her. “Well, Mama?” he said affably. “Which of them shall it be?”
2
After an astonished moment the Duchess said: “Dearest, are you roasting me? You can’t in all seriousness be asking me to choose for you!”
“No, not choose precisely. I wish you will advise me, though. You’re not acquainted with any of them, but you know their families, and if you should have a decided preference—”
“But, Sylvester, have
“No, that’s the devil of it: I haven’t. Whenever I think one more eligible than any of the others as sure as check I find she has some fault or trick which I don’t like. Lady Jane’s laugh, for instance; or Miss Orton’s infernal harp! I’ve no turn for music, and to be obliged to endure a harp’s being eternally twanged in my own house—no, I think that’s coming it a trifle too strong, don’t you, Mama? Then Lady Mary—”
“Thank you, I have heard enough to be able to give you my advice!” interrupted his mother. “Don’t make an offer for any one of them! You are not in love!”
“In love! No, of course I am not. Is that so necessary?”
“Most necessary, my dear! Don’t, I beg you, offer marriage where you can’t offer love as well!”
He smiled at her. “You are too romantic, Mama.”
“Am I? But you seem to have no romance in you at all!”
“Well, I don’t look for it in marriage, at any rate.”
“Only in the muslin company?”
He laughed. “You shock me, Mama! That’s a different matter. I shouldn’t call it romance either—or only one’s first adventure, perhaps. And even when I was a greenhead, and fell in love with the most dazzling little bird of Paradise you ever saw, I don’t think I really fancied myself to have formed a lasting passion! I daresay I’m too volatile, in which case—”
“No such thing! You have not yet been fortunate enough to meet the girl for whom you
“Very true: I haven’t! And since I’ve been on the town for nearly ten years, and may be said to have had my pick of all the eligible debutantes that appear yearly on the Marriage Mart, we must conclude that if I’m not too volatile I must be too nice in my requirements. To be frank with you, Mama, you are the only lady of my acquaintance with whom I don’t soon become heartily bored!”
A tiny frown appeared between her winged brows as she listened to this speech. It was spoken in a bantering tone, but she found it disturbing. “Your
