owledge, after all these years of
resistance--resistance to my most legitimate efforts to dispose of
you--there was a certain piquancy in seeing you caught at last!'

'Upon my word!' he said, throwing back his head with a not very cordial
laugh, in which, however, his aunt joined. She was sitting opposite to
him, her powerful loosely-gloved hands crossed over the rich velvet of
her dress, her fair large face and grayish hair surmounted by a mighty
cap, as vigorous, shrewd, and individual a type of English middle age as
could be found. The room behind her and the second and third
drawing-rooms were brilliantly lighted. Mr. Wynnstay was enjoying a
cigar in peace in the smoking-room, while his wife and nephew were
awaiting the arrival of the evening's guests upstairs.

Lady Charlotte's mind had been evidently much perturbed by the
conversation with her nephew of which we are merely describing the
latter half. She was labouring under an uncomfortable sense of being
hoist with her own petard--an uncomfortable memory of a certain warning
of her husband's, delivered at Murewell.

'And now,' said Mr. Flaxman, 'having confessed in so many words that you
have done your best to bring me up to the fence, will you kindly
recapitulate the arguments why in your opinion I should not jump it?'

'Society, amusement, flirtation, are one thing,' she replied with
judicial imperativeness, 'marriage is another. In these democratic days
we must know everybody; we should only marry our equals.'

The instant, however, the words were out of her mouth, she regretted
them. Mr. Flaxman's expression changed.

'I do not agree with you,' he said calmly, 'and you know I do not. You
could not, I imagine, have relied much upon _that_ argument.'

'Good gracious, Hugh!' cried Lady Charlotte crossly; 'you talk as if I
were really the old campaigner some people suppose me to be. I have been
amusing myself--I have liked to see you amused. And it is only the last
few weeks since you have begun to devote yourself so tremendously, that
I have come to take the thing seriously at all. I confess, if you like,
that I have got you into the scrape--now I want to get you out of it! I
am not thin-skinned, but I hate family unpleasantnesses--and you know
what the duke will say.'

'The duke be--translated!' said Flaxman coolly. 'Nothing of what you
have said or could say on this point, my dear aunt, has the smallest
weight with me. But Providence has been kinder to