rtune at the same time. With such a one that would be fair
enough. He would give and take. With George that would not be
honest;--nor would such accusation be true. The position, as you call
it, he would feel to be burdensome. As to money, he does not know
whether Frances has a shilling or not."

"Not a shilling,--unless I give it to her."

"He would not think of such a matter."

"Then he must be a very imprudent young man, and unfit to have a wife
at all."

"I cannot admit that,--but suppose he is?"

"And yet you think--?"

"I think, sir, that it is unfortunate. I have said so ever since I
first heard it. I shall tell him exactly what I think. You will have
Frances with you, and will of course express your own opinion."

The Marquis was far from satisfied with his son, but did not dare to
go on further with the argument. In all such discussions he was wont
to feel that his son was "talking the hind legs off a dog." His own
ideas on concrete points were clear enough to him,--as this present
idea that his daughter, Lady Frances Trafford, would outrage all
propriety, all fitness, all decency, if she were to give herself in
marriage to George Roden, the Post Office clerk. But words were not
plenty with him,--or, when plenty, not efficacious,--and he was prone
to feel, when beaten in argument, that his opponent was taking an
unfair advantage. Thus it was that he often thought, and sometimes
said, that those who oppressed him with words would "talk the hind
legs off a dog."

The Marchioness also expressed her opinion to Hampstead. She was a
lady stronger than her husband;--stronger in this, that she never
allowed herself to be worsted in any encounter. If words would not
serve her occasion at the moment, her countenance would do so,--and
if not that, her absence. She could be very eloquent with silence,
and strike an adversary dumb by the way in which she would leave a
room. She was a tall, handsome woman, with a sublime gait.--"Vera
incessu patuit Dea." She had heard, if not the words, then some
translation of the words, and had taken them to heart, and borne them
with her as her secret motto. To be every inch an aristocrat, in look
as in thought, was the object of her life. That such was her highest
duty was quite fixed in her mind. It had pleased God to make her a
Marchioness,--and should she derogate from God's wish? It had been
her one misfortune that God should not also have made her the mother
of a future M