unquestioned. To be sure, others do the same, but they are
female eccentrics, and have cast off the rag altogether."

Sir Austin drew nearer to her. "You would have made an admirable mother,
madam."

This from Sir Austin was very like positive wooing.

"It is," he continued, "ten thousand pities that you are not one."

"Do you think so?" She spoke with humility.

"I would," he went on, "that heaven had given you a daughter."

"Would you have thought her worthy of Richard?"

"Our blood, madam, should have been one!"

The lady tapped her toe with her parasol. "But I am a mother," she said.
"Richard is my son. Yes! Richard is my boy," she reiterated.

Sir Austin most graciously appended, "Call him ours, madam," and held
his head as if to catch the word from her lips, which, however, she
chose to refuse, or defer. They made the coloured West a common point
for their eyes, and then Sir Austin said:

"As you will not say 'ours,' let me. And, as you have therefore an
equal claim on the boy, I will confide to you a project I have lately
conceived."

The announcement of a project hardly savoured of a coming proposal,
but for Sir Austin to confide one to a woman was almost tantamount to a
declaration. So Lady Blandish thought, and so said her soft, deep-eyed
smile, as she perused the ground while listening to the project. It
concerned Richard's nuptials. He was now nearly eighteen. He was to
marry when he was five-and-twenty. Meantime a young lady, some years his
junior, was to be sought for in the homes of England, who would be
every way fitted by education, instincts, and blood--on each of which
qualifications Sir Austin unreservedly enlarged--to espouse so perfect a
youth and accept the honourable duty of assisting in the perpetuation of
the Feverels. The baronet went on to say that he proposed to set forth
immediately, and devote a couple of months, to the first essay in his
Coelebite search.

"I fear," said Lady Blandish, when the project had been fully unfolded,
"you have laid down for yourself a difficult task. You must not be too
exacting."

"I know it." The baronet's shake of the head was piteous.

"Even in England she will be rare. But I confine myself to no class.
If I ask for blood it is for untainted, not what you call high blood.
I believe many of the middle classes are frequently more careful--more
pure-blooded--than our aristocracy. Show me among them a God-fearing
family who educate their childre