s but skin deep--and
that she valued you for your virtues and prudence rather than your
good looks."

"Virtues and prudence! She said I was prudent and virtuous?"

"Yes."

"And you talked of my beauty? That was so kind of you. You didn't
either of you say anything about other matters?"

"What other matters?"

"Oh! I don't know. Only some people are sometimes valued rather for
what they've got than for any good qualities belonging to themselves
intrinsically."

"That can never be the case with Miss Dunstable; especially not at
Courcy Castle," said Frank, bowing easily from the corner of the sofa
over which he was leaning.

"Of course not," said Miss Dunstable; and Frank at once perceived
that she spoke in a tone of voice differing much from that
half-bantering, half-good-humoured manner that was customary with
her. "Of course not: any such idea would be quite out of the question
with Lady de Courcy." She paused for a moment, and then added
in a tone different again, and unlike any that he had yet heard
from her:--"It is, at any rate, out of the question with Mr Frank
Gresham--of that I am quite sure."

Frank ought to have understood her, and have appreciated the good
opinion which she intended to convey; but he did not entirely do so.
He was hardly honest himself towards her; and he could not at first
perceive that she intended to say that she thought him so. He knew
very well that she was alluding to her own huge fortune, and was
alluding also to the fact that people of fashion sought her because
of it; but he did not know that she intended to express a true
acquittal as regarded him of any such baseness.

And did he deserve to be acquitted? Yes, upon the whole he did;--to
be acquitted of that special sin. His desire to make Miss Dunstable
temporarily subject to his sway arose, not from a hankering after her
fortune, but from an ambition to get the better of a contest in which
other men around him seemed to be failing.

For it must not be imagined that, with such a prize to be struggled
for, all others stood aloof and allowed him to have his own way
with the heiress, undisputed. The chance of a wife with two hundred
thousand pounds is a godsend which comes in a man's life too seldom
to be neglected, let that chance be never so remote.

Frank was the heir to a large embarrassed property; and, therefore,
the heads of families, putting their wisdoms together, had thought it
most meet that this daughter of P