rt, made by the Dean,--a compact
with his daughter contracted in a jocose fashion,--which in the
existing circumstances was like to prove troublesome. There had been a
question of expenditure when the house was furnished,--whether there
should or should not be a carriage kept. Lord George had expressed an
opinion that their joint means would not suffice to keep a carriage.
Then the Dean had told his daughter that he would allow her L300 a-year
for her own expenses, to include the brougham,--for it was to be no
more than a brougham,--during the six months they would be in London,
and that he would regard this as his subscription towards the
household. Such a mode of being generous to his own child was pretty
enough. Of course the Dean would be a welcome visitor. Equally, of
course, a son-in-law may take any amount of money from a father-in-law
as a portion of his wife's fortune. Lord George, though he had suffered
some inward qualms, had found nothing in the arrangement to which he
could object while his friendship with the deanery was close and
pleasant. But now, as the Dean took his departure, and as Mary, while
embracing her father, said something of his being soon back, Lord
George remembered the compact with inward grief, and wished that there
had been no brougham.

In the mean time he had not been to Berkeley Square; nor was he at all
sure that he would go there. A distant day had been named, before that
exciting interview in the square, on which the Houghtons were to dine
in Munster Court. The Mildmays were also to be there, and Mrs.
Montacute Jones, and old Lord Parachute, Lord George's uncle. That
would be a party, and there would be no danger of a scene then. He had
almost determined that, in spite of his promise, he would not go to
Berkeley Square before the dinner. But Mrs. Houghton was not of the
same mind. A promise on such a subject was a sacred thing, and
therefore she wrote the following note to Lord George at his club. The
secrecy which some correspondence requires certainly tends to make a
club a convenient arrangement. "Why don't you come as you said you
would? A." In olden times, fifteen or twenty years ago, when telegraph
wires were still young, and messages were confined to diplomatic
secrets, horse-racing, and the rise and fall of stocks, lovers used to
indulge in rapturous expressions which would run over pages; but the
pith and strength of laconic diction has now been taught to us by the
self-s