ilent: the apparent indifference of a person whom he believed to
be living out her life in solitude, occupied only with his memory,
annoys and mortifies him. He has never doubted his own power to write
his name indelibly on the hearts of women.

"Perhaps she wishes to marry Brandolin?" suggests Dorothy Usk.

"Pshaw!" says Lord Gervase.

"Why pshaw?" repeats his cousin, persistently. "He would not be a man to
my taste, and he hates marriage, and he has a set of Hindoos at St.
Hubert's Lea, which would require as much cleaning as the Augean stable;
but I dare say she doesn't know anything about them, and he may be
persuading her that he thinks marriage opens the doors of Paradise: men
can so easily pretend that sort of thing! A great many men have wanted
to marry her, I believe, since she came back into the world after her
seclusion. George declares that Brandolin is quite serious."

"Preposterous!" replies Lord Gervase.

"Really, I don't see that," replies his judicious cousin. "A great many
women have wanted to marry _him_, though one wonders why. Indeed, I have
heard some of them declare that he is wholly irresistible when he
chooses."

"With Hindoos, perhaps," says Gervase.

"With our own women," says his cousin. "Lady Mary Jardine died of a
broken heart because he wouldn't look at her."

"Pray spare me the roll-call of his victims," says Lord Gervase,
irritably: he is passionately jealous of Brandolin. He himself had
forgotten Xenia Sabaroff, and forgotten all his obligations to her, when
she had been, as he always had believed, within reach of his hand if he
stretched it out; but viewed as a woman whom other men wooed and another
man might win, she has become to him intensely to be desired and to be
disputed. He has been a spoiled child of fortune and of the
drawing-rooms all his years, and the slightest opposition is intolerable
to him.

"I have no doubt," continues Dorothy Usk, gently, continuing her
embroidery of a South Kensington design of lilies and palm-leaves, "that
if he were aware you had a prior claim, if he thought or knew that you
had ever enjoyed her sympathy, he would immediately withdraw and leave
the field: he is a very proud man, with all his carelessness, and would
not, I think, care to be second to anybody in the affections of a woman
whom he seriously sought."

"What do you mean?" asks Gervase, abruptly, pausing in his walk to and
fro the boudoir.

"Only what I say," she answers. "