be received with open arms by my relatives--that my family would be
overjoyed to receive her as one of them. I only hinted that my lord's gout
might prevent him from being at the wedding. I'm not sure Uncle Danesbury
would not come over. "And the charming Lady Maude," asked she, "would she
honour me so far as to be a bridesmaid?"'

'She didn't say that?'

'She did. She actually pushed me to promise I should ask her.'

'Which you never would.'

'Of that I will not affirm I am quite positive; but I certainly intend to
press my uncle for some sort of recognition of the marriage--a civil note;
better still, if it could be managed, an invitation to his house in town.'

'You are a bold fellow to think of it.'

'Not so bold as you imagine. Have you not often remarked that when a man of
good connections is about to exile himself by accepting a far-away post,
whether it be out of pure compassion or a feeling that it need never
be done again, and that they are about to see the last of him; but,
somehow--whatever the reason--his friends are marvellously civil and polite
to him, just as some benevolent but eccentric folk send a partridge to the
condemned felon for his last dinner.'

'They do that in France.'

'Here it would be a rumpsteak; but the sentiment is the same. At all
events, the thing is as I told you, and I do not despair of Danesbury.'

'For the letter, perhaps not; but he'll never ask you to Bruton Street,
nor, if he did, could you accept.'

'You are thinking of Lady Maude.'

'I am.'

'There would be no difficulty in that quarter. When a Whig becomes Tory, or
a Tory Whig, the gentlemen of the party he has deserted never take umbrage
in the same way as the vulgar dogs below the gangway; so it is in the
world. The people who must meet, must dine together, sit side by side
at flower-shows and garden-parties, always manage to do their hatreds
decorously, and only pay off their dislikes by instalments. If Lady Maude
were to receive my wife at all, it would be with a most winning politeness.
All her malevolence would limit itself to making the supposed underbred
woman commit a _gaucherie_, to do or say something that ought not to have
been done or said; and, as I know Nina can stand the test, I have no fears
for the experiment.'

A knock at the door apprised them that the dinner was waiting, neither
having heard the bell which had summoned them a quarter of an hour before.
'And I wanted to hear all about your