d speak to Mr Gresham."

The countess smiled grimly, and shook her head with a decidedly
negative shake. Had she said out loud to the young man, "Your father
is such an obstinate, pig-headed, ignorant fool, that it is no use
speaking to him; it would be wasting fragrance on the desert air,"
she could not have spoken more plainly. The effect on Frank was this:
that he said to himself, speaking quite as plainly as Lady de Courcy
had spoken by her shake of the face, "My mother and aunt are always
down on the governor, always; but the more they are down on him the
more I'll stick to him. I certainly will take my degree: I will read
like bricks; and I'll begin to-morrow."

"Now will you take some beef, aunt?" This was said out loud.

The Countess de Courcy was very anxious to go on with her lesson
without loss of time; but she could not, while surrounded by guests
and servants, enunciate the great secret: "You must marry money,
Frank; that is your one great duty; that is the matter to be borne
steadfastly in your mind." She could not now, with sufficient weight
and impress of emphasis, pour this wisdom into his ears; the more
especially as he was standing up to his work of carving, and was deep
to his elbows in horse-radish, fat, and gravy. So the countess sat
silent while the banquet proceeded.

"Beef, Harry?" shouted the young heir to his friend Baker. "Oh! but I
see it isn't your turn yet. I beg your pardon, Miss Bateson," and he
sent to that lady a pound and a half of excellent meat, cut out with
great energy in one slice, about half an inch thick.

And so the banquet went on.

Before dinner Frank had found himself obliged to make numerous small
speeches in answer to the numerous individual congratulations of his
friends; but these were as nothing to the one great accumulated onus
of an oration which he had long known that he should have to sustain
after the cloth was taken away. Someone of course would propose his
health, and then there would be a clatter of voices, ladies and
gentlemen, men and girls; and when that was done he would find
himself standing on his legs, with the room about him, going round
and round and round.

Having had a previous hint of this, he had sought advice from his
cousin, the Honourable George, whom he regarded as a dab at speaking;
at least, so he had heard the Honourable George say of himself.

"What the deuce is a fellow to say, George, when he stands up after
the clatter is done?