ld
occupy in the country, the soundness of the investment, the certainty of
securing great matches for the girls. What a view that window opened of
the Splugen Alps! What a delicious spot, this little room, to sip one's
claret of an autumn evening! Think of the dessert growing almost into
the very dining-room, and your trout leaping within a yard of the
breakfast-table! Austrians charmed to have you--make you a count--a
Hof something or other, at once--give you a cross--great fun, eh?--Graf
O'Reilly--sound admirably--do it, by all means!

While Twining's attack was being conducted in this fashion, Lord
Lackington was not less industriously pursuing his plan of campaign
elsewhere. He had sauntered with Molly into the garden and a little
pavilion at the end of it, where the lake was seen in one of its most
picturesque aspects. It was a well-known spot to him; he had passed many
an evening on that low window-seat, half dreamingly forgetting himself
in the peaceful scene, half consciously recalling pleasant nights at
Brookes's and gay dinners at Carlton House. Here was it that he first
grew hipped with matrimony, and so sated with its happiness that he
actually began to long for any little disaster that might dash the
smooth monotony of his life; and yet now, by one of those strange tricks
memory plays us, he fancied that the moments he had once passed here had
never been equalled in all his after-life.

"I'm certain, though you won't confess," said she, after one of his most
eloquent bursts of remembered enjoyment,--"I 'm certain you were very
much in love those days."

"An ideal passion, perhaps, a poetized vision of that bright creature
who should, one day or other, sway this poor heart;" and he flattened
the creases of his spotless white waistcoat; "but if you mean that I
knew of any, had ever seen any, until now, this very moment--"

"Stop! remember your promise," said she, laughing.

"But, _charmante_ Molly, I 'm only mortal," said he, with an air of such
superb humility that made her at once remember it was a peer who said
it.

"Mortals must keep their words," said she, pertly. "The condition on
which I consented to accept your companionship was--But I need n't
remind you."

"No, do not, dear Molly, for I shall be delighted to forget it. You are
aware that no law ever obliged a man to do what was impossible; and that
to exact any pledge from him to such an end is in itself an illegality.
You little suspected