e kind--a thorough woman of the world enforces no such
penalties as these. True free-trade is the great matrimonial maxim, and
for people of small means it is inestimable. The formula may be stated
thus--'Dine at the best houses, and give tea at your own.'

What other precepts of equal wisdom Walpole was prepared to enunciate were
lost to the world by a message informing him that Miss Betty was in the
drawing-room, and the family assembled, to see him.

Cecil Walpole possessed a very fair stock of that useful quality called
assurance; but he had no more than he needed to enter that large room,
where the assembled family sat in a half-circle, and stand to be surveyed
by Miss O'Shea's eye-glass, unabashed. Nor was the ordeal the less trying
as he overheard the old lady ask her neighbour, 'if he wasn't the image of
the Knave of Diamonds.'

'I thought you were the other man!' said she curtly, as he made his bow.

'I deplore the disappointment, madam--even though I do not comprehend it.'

'It was the picture, the photograph, of the other man I saw--a fine, tall,
dark man, with long moustaches.'

'The fine, tall, dark man, with the long moustaches, is in the house, and
will be charmed to be presented to you.'

'Ay, ay! presented is all very fine; but that won't make him the
bridegroom,' said she, with a laugh.

'I sincerely trust it will not, madam.'

'And it is you, then, are Major Walpole?'

'Mr. Walpole, madam--my friend Lockwood is the major.'

'To be sure. I have it right now. You are the young man that got into that
unhappy scrape, and got the Lord-Lieutenant turned away--'

'I wonder how you endure this,' burst out Nina, as she arose and walked
angrily towards a window.

'I don't think I caught what the young lady said; but if it was, that what
cannot be cured must be endured, it is true enough; and I suppose that
they'll get over your blunder as they have done many another.'

'I live in that hope, madam.'

'Not but it's a bad beginning in public life; and a stupid mistake hangs
long on a man's memory. You're young, however, and people are generous
enough to believe it might be a youthful indiscretion.'

'You give me great comfort, madam.'

'And now you are going to risk another venture?'

'I sincerely trust on safer grounds.'

'That's what they all think. I never knew a man that didn't believe he drew
the prize in matrimony. Ask him, however, six months after he's tied. Say,
"What do you think of