idable menace of the
marriageable, and cause people, as he said, to stop meddling. Now that
the novelty of his situation was wearing off, his natural indolence
reasserted itself, and there was nothing he dreaded more than having to
be on his guard against the innumerable plans that his well-wishers were
perpetually making for him. Sometimes Susy fancied he was marrying her
because to do so was to follow the line of least resistance.

"To marry me is the easiest way of not marrying all the others," she
laughed, as he stood before her one day in a quiet alley of the Bois
de Boulogne, insisting on the settlement of various preliminaries. "I
believe I'm only a protection to you."

An odd gleam passed behind his eyes, and she instantly guessed that he
was thinking: "And what else am I to you?"

She changed colour, and he rejoined, laughing also: "Well, you're that
at any rate, thank the Lord!"

She pondered, and then questioned: "But in the interval-how are you
going to defend yourself for another year?"

"Ah, you've got to see to that; you've got to take a little house in
London. You've got to look after me, you know."

It was on the tip of her tongue to flash back: "Oh, if that's all
you care--!" But caring was exactly the factor she wanted, as much as
possible, to keep out of their talk and their thoughts. She could
not ask him how much he cared without laying herself open to the same
question; and that way terror lay. As a matter of fact, though Strefford
was not an ardent wooer--perhaps from tact, perhaps from temperament,
perhaps merely from the long habit of belittling and disintegrating
every sentiment and every conviction--yet she knew he did care for her
as much as he was capable of caring for anyone. If the element of habit
entered largely into the feeling--if he liked her, above all, because he
was used to her, knew her views, her indulgences, her allowances, knew
he was never likely to be bored, and almost certain to be amused, by
her; why, such ingredients though not of the fieriest, were perhaps
those most likely to keep his feeling for her at a pleasant temperature.
She had had a taste of the tropics, and wanted more equable weather; but
the idea of having to fan his flame gently for a year was unspeakably
depressing to her. Yet all this was precisely what she could not say.
The long period of probation, during which, as she knew, she would
have to amuse him, to guard him, to hold him, and to keep off t