to know him, your prospects being so indefinite at
present; not one for me.'

'If you don't follow up this chance of being spiritual queen of
Melchester, you will never have another of being anything. Mind this,
Viviette: you are not so young as you were. You are getting on to be a
middle-aged woman, and your black hair is precisely of the sort which
time quickly turns grey. You must make up your mind to grizzled
bachelors or widowers. Young marriageable men won't look at you; or if
they do just now, in a year or two more they'll despise you as an
antiquated party.'

Lady Constantine perceptibly paled. 'Young men what?' she asked. 'Say
that again.'

'I said it was no use to think of young men; they won't look at you much
longer; or if they do, it will be to look away again very quickly.'

'You imply that if I were to marry a man younger than myself he would
speedily acquire a contempt for me? How much younger must a man be than
his wife--to get that feeling for her?' She was resting her elbow on the
chair as she faintly spoke the words, and covered her eyes with her hand.

'An exceedingly small number of years,' said Louis drily. 'Now the
Bishop is at least fifteen years older than you, and on that account, no
less than on others, is an excellent match. You would be head of the
church in this diocese: what more can you require after these years of
miserable obscurity? In addition, you would escape that minor thorn in
the flesh of bishops' wives, of being only "Mrs." while their husbands
are peers.'

She was not listening; his previous observation still detained her
thoughts.

'Louis,' she said, 'in the case of a woman marrying a man much younger
than herself, does he get to dislike her, even if there has been a social
advantage to him in the union?'

'Yes,--not a whit less. Ask any person of experience. But what of that?
Let's talk of our own affairs. You say you have no thought of the
Bishop. And yet if he had stayed here another day or two he would have
proposed to you straight off.'

'Seriously, Louis, I could not accept him.'

'Why not?'

'I don't love him.'

'Oh, oh, I like those words!' cried Louis, throwing himself back in his
chair and looking at the ceiling in satirical enjoyment. 'A woman who at
two-and-twenty married for convenience, at thirty talks of not marrying
without love; the rule of inverse, that is, in which more requires less,
and less requires more. As your only bro