shire," said Pratt.

"And I thought you were in Switzerland."

"I have been in Switzerland," said Pratt.

"And I have been in Barsetshire," said Crosbie. Then they ordered
their dinner together.

"And so you're going to be married?" said Pratt, when the waiter had
carried away the cheese.

"Who told you that?"

"Well, but you are? Never mind who told me, if I was told the truth."

"But if it be not true?"

"I have heard it for the last month," said Pratt, "and it has been
spoken of as a thing certain; and it is true; is it not?"

"I believe it is," said Crosbie, slowly.

"Why, what on earth is the matter with you, that you speak of it in
that way? Am I to congratulate you, or am I not? The lady, I'm told,
is a cousin of Dale's."

Crosbie had turned his chair from the table round to the fire, and
said nothing in answer to this. He sat with his glass of sherry in
his hand, looking at the coals, and thinking whether it would not be
well that he should tell the whole story to Pratt. No one could give
him better advice; and no one, as far as he knew his friend, would
be less shocked at the telling of such a story. Pratt had no romance
about women, and had never pretended to very high sentiments.

"Come up into the smoking-room and I'll tell you all about it," said
Crosbie. So they went off together, and, as the smoking-room was
untenanted, Crosbie was able to tell his story.

He found it very hard to tell;--much harder than he had beforehand
fancied. "I have got into terrible trouble," he began by saying. Then
he told how he had fallen suddenly in love with Lily, how, he had
been rash and imprudent, how nice she was--"infinitely too good for
such a man as I am," he said;--how she had accepted him, and then how
he had repented. "I should have told you beforehand," he then said,
"that I was already half engaged to Lady Alexandrina de Courcy." The
reader, however, will understand that this half engagement was a
fiction.

"And now you mean that you are altogether engaged to her?"

"Exactly so."

"And that Miss Dale must be told that, on second thoughts, you have
changed your mind?"

"I know that I have behaved very badly," said Crosbie.

"Indeed you have," said his friend.

"It is one of those troubles in which a man finds himself involved
almost before he knows where he is."

"Well; I can't look at it exactly in that light. A man may amuse
himself with a girl, and I can understand his disappointing he