one he can't have clipped the property. He
has never gambled, and never spent his income. Italian wives and
that sort of thing don't cost so much money as they do in England.

"Pray write and tell me all about it. I shall be in town in
February, and of course shall see you. I tell Mr. Jones that I
can't stand Curry Hall for more than three months. He won't come
to town till May, and perhaps when May comes he'll have forgotten
all about it. He is very fond of sheep, but I don't think he cares
for anything else, unless he has a slight taste for pigs.

"Your affectionate friend,

"G. MONTACUTE JONES."

There was much in this letter that astonished Mary, something that
shocked her, but something also that pleased her. The young and lovely
Marchioness of Brotherton! Where is the woman who would not like to be
a young and lovely Marchioness, so that it had all been come by
honestly, that the husband had been married as husbands ought to be
married, and had not been caught like Lord Giblet; and she knew that
her old friend,--her old friend whom she had not yet known for quite
twelve months,--was only joking with her in that suggestion as to
being cut. What a fate was this in store for her--if it really was in
store--that so early in her life she should be called upon to fill so
high a place. Then she made some resolutions in her mind that should it
be so she would be humble and meek; and a further resolution that she
would set her heart upon none of it till it was firmly her own.

But it shocked her that the Marquis should be so spoken of, especially
that he should be so spoken of if he were really dying! Plain speaking!
Yes, indeed. But such plain speaking was very terrible. This old woman
could speak of another nobleman having gout in his stomach as though
that were a thing really to be desired. And then that allusion to the
Italian wife or wives! Poor Mary blushed as she thought of it.

But there was a paragraph in the letter which interested her as much as
the tidings respecting Lord Brotherton. Could it be right that Jack De
Baron should be made to marry Guss Mildmay? She thought not, for she
knew that he did not love Guss Mildmay. That he should have wanted an
impossible brick, whether the highest or lowest brick, was very sad.
When children cry for impossible bricks they must of course be
disappointed. But she hardly thought that this would be the proper cure
for h