ll you; everything's tied up."

"Ah well, he'll get tied up, too. He'll marry an American heiress."

"Confound him! I'd rather see the house extinct first."

"Hoity, toity! She'll be quite as good as any of you."

"I can't discuss this with you, Peter," said Lancelot, gently but firmly.
"If there is a word I hate more than the word heiress, it is the word
American."

"But why? They're both very good words and better things."

"They both smack of the most vulgar thing in the world--money," said
Lancelot, walking hotly about the room. "In America there's no other
standard. To make your pile, to strike ile--oh, how I shudder to hear
these idioms! And can any one hear the word heiress without immediately
thinking of matrimony? Phaugh? It's a prostitution."

"What is? You're not very coherent, my friend."

"Very well, I am incoherent. If a great old family can only bolster up
its greatness by alliances with the daughters of oil-strikers, then let
the family perish with honour."

"But the daughters of oil-strikers are sometimes very charming creatures.
They are polished with their fathers' oil."

"You are right. They reek of it. Pah! I pray to Heaven Lionel will
either wed a lady or die a bachelor."

"Yes; but what do you call a lady?" persisted Peter.

Lancelot uttered an impatient snarl, and rang the bell violently. Peter
stared in silence. Mary Ann appeared.

"How often am I to tell you to leave my matches on the mantel-shelf?"
snapped Lancelot. "You seem to delight to hide them away, as if I had
time to play parlour games with you."

Mary Ann silently went to the mantel-piece, handed him the matches, and
left the room without a word.

"I, say, Lancelot, adversity doesn't seem to have agreed with you," said
Peter severely. "That poor girl's eyes were quite wet when she went out.
Why didn't you speak? I could have given you heaps of lights, and you
might even have sacrificed another scrap of that precious manuscript."

"Well, she has got a knack of hiding my matches all the same," said
Lancelot somewhat shamefacedly. "Besides, I hate her for being called
Mary Ann. It's the last terror of cheap apartments. If she only had
another name like a human being, I'd gladly call her Miss something. I
went so far as to ask her, and she stared at me in a dazed, stupid, silly
way, as if I'd asked her to marry me. I suppose the fact is, she's been
called Mary Ann so long and so often that she's f