s if merely paying their required homage to
a member of the family.

As I approached the door of the boudoir, my surprise was not a little to
hear Lord Dudley de Vere's voice, the tones of which, though evidently
subdued by design, had a clear distinctness that made them perfectly
audible where I stood.

'Eh! you can't mean it, though. 'Pon my soul, it is too bad! You know I
shall lose my money if you persist.'

'I trust Lord Dudley de Vere is too much of a gentleman to make my
unprotected position in this house the subject of an insolent wager. I'm
sure nothing in my manner could ever have given encouragement to such a
liberty.'

'There, now, I knew you didn't understand it. The whole thing was a
chance; the odds were at least eighteen to one against you--ha, ha! I
mean in your favour. Devilish good mistake that of mine. They were all
shaken up in a hat. You see there was no collusion--could be none.'

'My lord, this impertinence becomes past enduring; and if you
persist----'

'Well, then, why not enter into the joke? It'll be a devilish expensive
one to me if you don't; that I promise you. What a confounded fool I
was not to draw out when Upton wished it! D--n it! I ought to have known
there is no trusting to a woman.' As he said this, he walked twice or
thrice hurriedly to and fro, muttering as he went, with ill-suppressed
passion: 'Laughed at, d--n me! that I shall be, all over the kingdom. To
lose the money is bad enough; but the ridicule of the thing, that's the
devil! Stay, Miss Bellew, stop one minute; I have another proposition
to make. Begad, I see nothing else for it. This, you know, was all a
humbug--mere joke, nothing more. Now, I can't stand the way I shall be
quizzed about it at all. So, here goes! hang me, if I don't make the
proposition in real earnest! There, now, say yes at once, and we 'll see
if I can't turn the laugh against them.'

There was a pause for an instant, and then Miss Bellew spoke. I would
have given worlds to have seen her at that moment; but the tone of her
voice, firm and unshaken, sank deep into my heart.

'My lord,' said she, 'this must now cease; but, as your lordship is fond
of a wager, I have one for your acceptance. The sum shall be your own
choosing. Whatever it be, I stake it freely, that, as I walk from this
room, the first gentleman I meet--you like a chance, my lord, and you
shall have one--will chastise you before the world for your unworthy,
unmanly insult to a