s easily. Mr. Greenwood had said words to him
which had vexed him sorely, and these words had in part referred to
his daughter and his daughter's lover. "No, I'm not very well," he
said in answer to Roden's inquiries. "I don't think I ever shall be
better. What is it about now?"

"I have come, my lord," said Roden, "because I do not like to be here
in your house under a false pretence."

"A false pretence? What false pretence? I hate false pretences."

"So do I."

"What do you mean by a false pretence now?"

"I fear that they have told you, Lord Kingsbury, that should you
give me your daughter as my wife, you will give her to the Duca di
Crinola." The Marquis, who was sitting in his arm-chair, shook his
head from side to side, and moved his hands uneasily, but made no
immediate reply. "I cannot quite tell, my lord, what your own ideas
are, because we have never discussed the subject."

"I don't want to discuss it just at present," said the Marquis.

"But it is right that you should know that I do not claim the title,
and never shall claim it. Others have done so on my behalf, but with
no authority from me. I have no means to support the rank in the
country to which it belongs; nor as an Englishman am I entitled to
assume it here."

"I don't know that you're an Englishman," said the Marquis. "People
tell me that you're an Italian."

"I have been brought up as an Englishman, and have lived as one for
five-and-twenty years. I think it would be difficult now to rob me
of my rights. Nobody, I fancy, will try. I am, and shall be, George
Roden, as I always have been. I should not, of course, trouble you
with the matter were it not that I am a suitor for your daughter's
hand. Am I right in supposing that I have been accepted here by
you in that light?" This was a question which the Marquis was not
prepared to answer at the moment. No doubt the young man had been
accepted. Lady Frances had been allowed to go down to Castle Hautboy
to meet him as her lover. All the family had been collected to
welcome him at the London mansion. The newspapers had been full
of mysterious paragraphs in which the future happy bridegroom was
sometimes spoken of as an Italian Duke and sometimes as an English
Post Office clerk. "Of course he must marry her now," the Marquis
had said to his wife, with much anger. "It's all your sister's
doings," he had said to her again. He had in a soft moment given his
affectionate blessing to his daughter