hate marriages, and if I
was to be hung for it I couldn't say a word to the fellow who is going
to be my brother-in-law. But I do agree about Carbury. It's very hard
to be good-natured to him.'

But, in the teeth of these adverse opinions Sir Felix managed to get
his dinner-table close to theirs and to tell them at dinner something
of his future prospects. He was going to travel and see the world. He
had, according to his own account, completely run through London life
and found that it was all barren.

'In life I've rung all changes through,
Run every pleasure down,
'Midst each excess of folly too,
And lived with half the town.'

Sir Felix did not exactly quote the old song, probably having never
heard the words. But that was the burden of his present story. It was
his determination to seek new scenes, and in search of them to travel
over the greater part of the known world.

'How jolly for you!' said Dolly.

'It will be a change, you know.'

'No end of a change. Is any one going with you?'

'Well;--yes. I've got a travelling companion;--a very pleasant fellow,
who knows a lot, and will be able to coach me up in things. There's a
deal to be learned by going abroad, you know.'

'A sort of a tutor,' said Nidderdale.

'A parson, I suppose,' said Dolly.

'Well;--he is a clergyman. Who told you?'

'It's only my inventive genius. Well;--yes; I should say that would be
nice,--travelling about Europe with a clergyman. I shouldn't get enough
advantage out of it to make it pay, but I fancy it will just suit
you.'

'It's an expensive sort of thing;--isn't it?' asked Nidderdale.

'Well;--it does cost something. But I've got so sick of this kind of
life;--and then that railway Board coming to an end, and the club
smashing up, and--'

'Marie Melmotte marrying Fisker,' suggested Dolly.

'That too, if you will. But I want a change, and a change I mean to
have. I've seen this side of things, and now I'll have a look at the
other.'

'Didn't you have a row in the street with some one the other day?'
This question was asked very abruptly by Lord Grasslough, who, though
he was sitting near them, had not yet joined in the conversation, and
who had not before addressed a word to Sir Felix. 'We heard something
about it, but we never got the right story.' Nidderdale glanced across
the table at Dolly, and Dolly whistled. Grasslough looked at the man
he addressed as one does look when one expects an