But as to the fact
of your rank, there it is. Whenever I see you,--and I hope I shall
see you very often,--I shall always suppose that I see an Italian
nobleman of the first class, and shall treat you so." He shrugged his
shoulders, feeling that he had nothing else to do. "If I were to find
myself in the society of some man calling himself by a title to which
I knew that he had no right,--I should probably call him by no name;
but I should be very careful not to treat him as a nobleman, knowing
that he had no right to be so treated. What can I do in your case but
just reverse the position?"

He never went back to the Post Office,--of course. What should a
Registrar of State Records to the Foreign Office do in so humble an
establishment? He never went back for the purposes of work. He called
to bid farewell to Sir Boreas, Mr. Jerningham, Crocker, and others
with whom he had served. "I did not think we should see much more of
you," said Sir Boreas, laughing.

"I intended to live and die with you," said Roden.

"We don't have dukes; or at any rate we don't keep them. Like to like
is a motto which I always find true. When I heard that you were
living with a young lord, and were going to marry the daughter of a
marquis, and had a title of your own which you could use as soon as
you pleased, I knew that I should lose you." Then he added in a
little whisper, "You couldn't get Crocker made a duke, could you,--or
a Registrar of Records?"

Mr. Jerningham was full of smiles and bows, pervaded thoroughly by a
feeling that he was bidding farewell to an august nobleman, though,
for negative reasons, he was not to be allowed to gratify his tongue
by naming the august name. Crocker was a little shy;--but he plucked
up his courage at last. "I shall always know what I know, you know,"
he said, as he shook hands with the friend to whom he had been so
much attached. Bobbin and Geraghty made no allusions to the title,
but they, too, as they were severally greeted, were evidently under
the influence of the nobility of their late brother clerk.

The marriage was duly solemnized when March came in the parish church
of Trafford. There was nothing grand,--no even distant imitation of
Lady Amaldina's glorious cavalcade. Hampstead did come down, and
endeavoured for the occasion to fit himself for the joy of the day.
His ship was ready for him, and he intended to start now in a week or
two. As it happened that the House was not sitting, Lord