t. Then the door was opened and dinner announced.

"Time and the hour run through the roughest day." In this way that
dinner at Kingsbury House did come to an end at last. There was a
weight of ill-humour about Lady Kingsbury on this special occasion
against which even Lady Persiflage found it impossible to prevail.
Roden, whose courage rose to the occasion, did make a gallant effort
to talk to Lady Frances, who sat next to him. But the circumstances
were hard upon him. Everybody else in the room was closely connected
with everybody else. Had he been graciously accepted by the mistress
of the house, he could have fallen readily enough into the intimacies
which would then have been opened to him. But as it was he was forced
to struggle against the stream, and so to struggle as to seem not to
struggle. At last, however, time and the hour had done its work, and
the ladies went up to the drawing-room.

"Lord Llwddythlw called him Mr. Roden!" This was said by the
Marchioness in a tone of bitter reproach as soon as the drawing-room
door was closed.

"I was so sorry," said Lady Amaldina.

"It does not signify in the least," said Lady Persiflage. "It cannot
be expected that a man should drop his old name and take a new one
all in a moment."

"He will never drop his old name and take the new one," said Lady
Frances.

"There now," said the Marchioness. "What do you think of that,
Geraldine?"

"My dear Fanny," said Lady Persiflage, without a touch of ill-nature
in her tone, "how can you tell what a young man will do?"

"I don't think it right to deceive Mamma," said Fanny. "I know him
well enough to be quite sure that he will not take the title, as he
has no property to support it. He has talked it over with me again
and again, and I agree with him altogether."

"Upon my word, Fanny, I didn't think that you would be so foolish,"
said her aunt. "This is a kind of thing in which a girl should not
interfere at all. It must be arranged between the young man's uncle
in Italy, and--and the proper authorities here. It must depend very
much upon--." Here Lady Persiflage reduced her words to the very
lowest whisper. "Your uncle has told me all about it, and of course
he must know better than any one else. It's a kind of thing that must
be settled for a man by,--by--by those who know how to settle it. A
man can't be this or that just as he pleases."

"Of course not," said Lady Amaldina.

"A man has to take the name, my dear,