hy it has made such an impression here."

Lady Sandgate forestalled his knowledge. "Because poor Kitty Imber--who
should either never touch a card or else learn to suffer in silence, as
I've had to, goodness knows!--has thrown herself, with her impossible
big debt, upon her father? whom she thinks herself entitled to 'look to'
even more as a lovely young widow with a good jointure than she formerly
did as the mere most beautiful daughter at home."

She had put the picture a shade interrogatively, but this was as nothing
to the note of free inquiry in Lord John's reply. "You mean that our
lovely young widows--to say nothing of lovely young wives--ought by this
time to have made out, in predicaments, how to turn round?"

His temporary hostess, even with his eyes on her, appeared to decide
after a moment not wholly to disown his thought. But she smiled for it.
"Well, in that set----!"

"My mother's set?" However, if she could smile he could laugh. "I'm much
obliged!"

"Oh," she qualified, "I don't criticise her Grace; but the ways and
traditions and tone of this house----"

"Make it"--he took her sense straight from her--"the house in England
where one feels most the false note of a dishevelled and bankrupt elder
daughter breaking in with a list of her gaming debts--to say nothing of
others!--and wishing to have at least those wiped out in the interest of
her reputation? Exactly so," he went on before she could meet it with a
diplomatic ambiguity; "and just that, I assure you, is a large part of
the reason I like to come here--since I personally don't come with any
such associations."

"Not the association of bankruptcy--no; as you represent the payee!"

The young man appeared to regard this imputation for a moment almost
as a liberty taken. "How do you know so well, Lady Sandgate, what I
represent?"

She bethought herself--but briefly and bravely. "Well, don't you
represent, by your own admission, certain fond aspirations? Don't
you represent the belief--very natural, I grant--that more than _one_
perverse and extravagant flower will be unlikely on such a fine healthy
old stem; and, consistently with that, the hope of arranging with our
admirable host here that he shall lend a helpful hand to your commending
yourself to dear Grace?"

Lord John might, in the light of these words, have felt any latent
infirmity in such a pretension exposed; but as he stood there facing
his chances he would have struck a spectato