els, specially when they're your
friends. I acknowledge that."

"I am sure you do," Mr. Quayle replied, indulgently. "You are always on
the side of doing the generous thing, my dear father,--when you see
it."

Here his lordship's grasp upon the head of his walking-stick relaxed
sensibly.

"Thank you, Ludovic. Very pleasant thing to have one's son say to one,
I must say, uncommonly pleasant."--Alas! he felt himself to be
slipping, slipping. "Deuced shrewd, diplomatic fellow, Ludovic," he
remarked to himself somewhat ruefully. All the same, the little
compliment warmed him through. He knew it made for defeat, yet for the
life of him he could not but relish it.--"Very pleasant," he repeated.
"But that's not the point, my dear boy. Now, about this young fellow
Calmady's proposal for your sister Constance?"

Mr. Quayle looked full at the speaker, and for once his expression held
no hint of impertinence or raillery.

"Dickie Calmady is as fine a fellow as ever fought, or won, an almost
hopeless battle," he said. "He is somewhat heroic, in my opinion. And
he is very lovable."

"Is he, though?" Lord Fallowfeild commented, quite gently.

"A woman who understood him, and had some idea of all he must have gone
through, could not well help being very proud of him."

Yet, even while speaking, the young man knew his advocacy to be but
half-hearted. He praised his friend rather than his friend's
contemplated marriage.--"But his dear, old lordship's not very quick.
He'll never spot that," he added mentally. And then he reflected that
little Lady Constance was not very quick either. She might marry
obediently, even gladly. But was it probable she would develop
sufficient imagination ever to understand, and therefore be proud of,
Richard Calmady?

"He is brilliant too," Ludovic continued. "He is as well read as any
man of his standing whom I know, and he can think for himself. And,
when he is in the vein he is unusually good company."

"Everybody says he is extraordinarily agreeable," broke in Lady Alicia.
"Old Lady Combmartin was saying only yesterday--George and I met her at
the Aldhams', Louisa, you know, at dinner--that she had not heard
better conversation for years. And she was brought up among Macaulay
and Rogers and all the Holland House set, so her opinion really is
worth having."

But Lord Fallowfeild's grasp had tightened again upon his
walking-stick.

"Was she, though?" he said rather incoherently.

"Pray,