d
Douglas, who made rather a fool of himself. I could not make him out
exactly."

"Did they snub you?"

"I dont know. Probably they tried. Are you intimate with many of our
young nobility under assumed names?"

"Steal a few more marches to the Bijou, and perhaps you will find out."

"Good-night! Pardon my abrupt departure, but you are not the very
sweetest of Susannas to-night."

"Oh, _good_-night."

"By the bye," said Conolly, returning, "this must be the Mr. Duke Lind
who is going to marry Lady Constance Carbury, my noble pupil's sister."

"I am sure it matters very little whom he marries."

"If he will pay us a visit here, and witness the working of perfect
frankness without affection, and perfect liberty without refinement, he
may find reason to conclude that it matters a good deal. Good-night."

CHAPTER II

Marian Lind lived at Westbourne Terrace, Paddington, with her father,
the fourth son of a younger brother of the Earl of Carbury. Mr. Reginald
Harrington Lind, at the outset of his career, had no object in life
except that of getting through it as easily as possible; and this he
understood so little how to achieve that he suffered himself to be
married at the age of nineteen to a Lancashire cotton spinner's heiress.
She bore him three children, and then eloped with a professor of
spiritualism, who deserted her on the eve of her fourth confinement, in
the course of which she caught scarlet fever and died. Her child
survived, but was sent to a baby farm and starved to death in the usual
manner. Her husband, disgusted by her behavior (for she had been
introduced by him to many noblemen and gentlemen, his personal friends,
some one at least of whom, on the slightest encouragement, would, he
felt sure, have taken the place of the foreign charlatan she had
disgraced him by preferring), consoled himself for her bad taste by
entering into her possessions, which comprised a quantity of new
jewellery, new lace, and feminine apparel, and an income of nearly seven
thousand pounds a year. After this, he became so welcome in society that
he could have boasted with truth at the end of any July that there were
few marriageable gentlewomen of twenty-six and upward in London who had
not been submitted to his inspection with a view to matrimony. But
finding it easy to delegate the care of his children to school
principals and hospitable friends, he concluded that he had nothing to
gain and much comfort to lose