She is bound
to say that many of the happiest marriages she has known have been
marriages of second--third--fourth--fifth--_n_th Love. She had better
have let it stand at that if she wanted her indistinct admirer to screw
up his courage then and there to sticking point. For the Hon. Percival
had at least seen in her words a road of approach to a reasonably tender
elderly avowal. But she must needs spoil it by adding--really quite
unconsciously--that many such marriages had been between persons in
quite mature years. Somehow this changed the nascent purpose kindled by
a suggestion of _n_th love in Autumn to a sudden consciousness that the
conversation was sailing very near the wind--some wind undefined--and
made Mr. Pellew run away pusillanimously.

"By-the-by, did you ever see the Macganister More man that died the
other day? Married the Earl's half-sister?"

"Never. Of course, I know Clotilda perfectly well."

"Let's see--oh yes!--she's Sister Nora. Oh yes, of course I know
Clotilda. She's his heiress, I fancy--comes into all the property--no
male heir. She'll go over to Rome, I suppose."

"Why?"

"Always do--with a lot of independent property. Unless some fillah cuts
in and snaps her up."

"Do tell me, Mr. Pellew, why it is men can never credit any woman with
an identity of her own?"

"Well, I only go by what I see. If they don't marry they go over to
Rome--when there's property--dessay I'm wrong.... What o'clock's
that?--ten, I suppose. No?--well, I suppose it must be eleven, when one
comes to think of it. But it's a shame to go in--night like this!" And
then this weak-minded couple impaired the effect of their little
declaration of independence of the united state--the phrase sounds
familiar somehow!--by staying out five or six minutes longer, and going
in half an hour later; two things only the merest pedant would declare
incompatible. But it kept the servants up, and Miss Dickenson had to
apologise to Mr. Norbury.

How many of us living in this present century can keep alive to the fact
that the occupants of country-mansions, now resplendent with an electric
glare which is destroying their eyesight and going out suddenly at
intervals, were sixty years ago dependent on candles and moderator
lamps, which ran down and had to be wound up, and then ran down again,
when there was no oil. There was no gas at the Towers; though there
might have been, granting seven miles of piping, from which the gas
would hav