will bring--you should feel now, when you consider whether you will
accept him or not, that they can bring no difference to you. You must be
unable to conceive of yourself at seventy as different from yourself now
with regard to him. What is that music-hall song? 'We've been together
now for forty years.' It expresses exactly what a girl should feel forty
years before.

"And now for a thing more difficult to say. Lord Lindfield has--has
knocked about a good deal. Sooner or later you will know that, and it is
infinitely better that you should know it sooner, for it seems to me
almost criminal that girls should be left to find that sort of thing out
for themselves when it is too late. Mind, I do not say that he will
knock about again. The fact that he is quite certainly intending to
propose to you shows that he does not mean to. But he is not bringing a
boy's first love to a girl."

Lady Nottingham leant forward and stroked Daisy's head.

"My dear, how brutal this must sound," she said. "But I am the least
brutal of women. Assure yourself of that. And I have told you all there
is to tell, as far as I know, but I should have blamed myself if I had
told you less. And here is Hendon, and it is time for us to dress."

Daisy got up and kissed her aunt with a quick, trembling caress.

"I think you are a perfect darling," she said.

CHAPTER III.

The Dover boat, midday service, was on the point of starting from the
quay at Calais, and luggage was being swung on to it in square trucks,
the passengers having already embarked. The day before a midsummer storm
had vexed the soul of the silver streak, which had turned to a grey
pewter streak of a peculiarly streaky nature, with white tops to the
waves that slung themselves over the head of the pier. Cabin-boys and
stewards were making horrible dispositions of tinware, and the head
steward was on the verge of distraction, since the whole world seemed to
have chosen this particular day to return to England, and the whole
world, with an eye on the Channel, desired private cabins, which were
numerically less than the demand. At the moment he was trying to keep
calm before the infuriated questions of a Frenchwoman who believed
herself to be speaking English.

"Mais que faire?" she said. "I have ordered, and where is it? It is not,
you tell me. I cannot be seeck with the canaille on the deck. I wish
reservee. If not, I shall not go, and charge the company."

"Yes'm," said