ent of twelve thousand?"

"Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace
herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve."

"And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient
time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?"

Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his
friend's general resources, to consider that question seriously. "Surely
you can have no difficulty whatever--!"

"Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I've had this year to
let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have
_liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a
matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty's horrid incubus?"

"Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_," Lord John brightly
indicated, "are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will
only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must
feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady
Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she
has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion."

"She has expressed a very high opinion of you?"--Lord Theign scarce
glowed with credulity.

But the younger man held his ground. "She has told me she thoroughly
likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such
things--she thinks me perfectly charming."

"A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then," said Lord Theign, "what
does she want more?"

"She very possibly wants nothing--but I'm to that beastly degree,
you see," his visitor patiently explained, "in the cleft stick of my
fearfully positive mother's wants. Those are her 'terms,' and I don't
mind saying that they're most disagreeable to me--I quite hate 'em:
there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn't
touch 'em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady
Grace--wasn't so immensely enlisted."

"I assure you I'd chuck 'em out of window, my boy, if I didn't believe
you'd be really good to her," Lord Theign returned with the properest
spirit.

It only encouraged his companion. "You _will_ just tell her then, now
and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?"

This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. "You truly hold
that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your
job?"

"That's the conviction I entertain."

Lord Theign thought again. "Well, e