were administered to Andy of a nature which made
him prefer Fawn Court to Warwick Square, and he was told that he
might go back to Portray as soon as he pleased.

When he was gone, Mrs. Hittaway opened her mind to her mother
altogether. "The truth is, mamma, that Frederic will marry her."

"But why? I thought that he had declared that he would give it up. I
thought that he had said so to herself."

"What of that, if he retracts what he said? He is so weak. Lady
Glencora Palliser has made him promise to go and see her; and he is
to go to-day. He is there now, probably,--at this very moment. If he
had been firm, the thing was done. After all that has taken place,
nobody would ever have supposed that his engagement need go for
anything. But what can he say to her now that he is with her, except
just do the mischief all over again? I call it quite wicked in
that woman's interfering. I do, indeed! She's a nasty, insolent,
impertinent creature;--that's what she is! After all the trouble I've
taken, she comes and undoes it all with one word."

"What can we do, Clara?"

"Well;--I do believe that if Frederic could be made to act as he
ought to do, just for a while, she would marry her cousin, Mr.
Greystock, and then there would be an end of it altogether. I really
think that she likes him best, and from all that I can hear, she
would take him now, if Frederic would only keep out of the way. As
for him, of course he is doing his very best to get her. He has not
one shilling to rub against another, and is over head and ears in
debt."

"Poor Lucy!" ejaculated Lady Fawn.

"Well;--yes; but really that is a matter of course. I always thought,
mamma, that you and Amelia were a little wrong to coax her up in that
belief."

"But, my dear, the man proposed for her in the plainest possible
manner. I saw his letter."

"No doubt;--men do propose. We all know that. I'm sure I don't know
what they get by it, but I suppose it amuses them. There used to be a
sort of feeling that if a man behaved badly something would be done
to him; but that's all over now. A man may propose to whom he likes,
and if he chooses to say afterwards that it doesn't mean anything,
there's nothing in the world to bring him to book."

"That's very hard," said the elder lady, of whom everybody said that
she did not understand the world as well as her daughter.

"The girls,--they all know that it is so, and I suppose it comes to
the same thing in the long