ladyship answered with a small grin.
"When you are a marchioness you may make penny buses a feature of the
distinguished _insouciance_ of your character if you like. I shouldn't
myself, because they jolt and stop to pick up people, but you can, with
originality and distinction, if it amuses you."

"It doesn't," said Emily. "I hate them. I have longed to be able to take
hansoms. Oh! how I have _longed_--when I was tired."

The legacy left her by old Mrs. Maytham had been realised and deposited
as a solid sum in a bank. Since she need no longer hoard the income of
twenty pounds a year, it was safe to draw upon her capital for her
present needs. The fact made her feel comfortable. She could make her
preparations for the change in her life with a decent independence. She
would have been definitely unhappy if she had been obliged to accept
favours at this juncture. She felt as if she could scarcely have borne
it. It seemed as if everything conspired to make her comfortable as well
as blissfully happy in these days.

Lord Walderhurst found an interest in watching her and her methods. He
was a man who, in certain respects, knew himself very well and had few
illusions respecting his own character. He had always been rather given
to matter-of-fact analysis of his own emotions; and at Mallowe he had
once or twice asked himself if it was not disagreeably possible that the
first moderate glow of his St. Martin's summer might die away and leave
him feeling slightly fatigued and embarrassed by the new aspect of his
previously regular and entirely self-absorbed existence. You might think
that you would like to marry a woman and then you might realise that
there were objections--that even the woman herself, with all her
desirable qualities, might be an objection in the end, that any woman
might be an objection; in fact, that it required an effort to reconcile
oneself to the fact of a woman's being continually about. Of course the
arriving at such a conclusion, after one had committed oneself, would be
annoying. Walderhurst had, in fact, only reflected upon this possible
aspect of affairs _before_ he had driven over the heath to pick Emily
up. Afterwards he had, in some remote portion of his mentality, vaguely
awaited developments.

When he saw Emily day by day at South Audley Street, he found he
continued to like her. He was not clever enough to analyse her; he could
only watch her, and he always looked on at her with curiosity and