her. If my wife would die and he would die, we might get
up another match and cut out Lord George after all." This speculation
was too deep even for Mr. De Baron, who laughed and shuffled himself
about, and got out of the room.

"Wouldn't you have liked to be a marchioness," he said, some hours
afterwards, to Mrs. Houghton. She was in the habit of sitting by him
and talking to him late in the evening, while he was sipping his
curacoa and soda water, and had become accustomed to hear odd things
from him. He liked her because he could say what he pleased to her, and
she would laugh and listen, and show no offence. But this last question
was very odd. Of course she thought that it referred to the old
overtures made to her by Lord George; but in that case, had she married
Lord George, she could only have been made a marchioness by his own
death,--by that and by the death of the little Popenjoy of whom she had
heard so much.

"If it had come in my way fairly," she said with an arch smile.

"I don't mean that you should have murdered anybody. Suppose you had
married me?"

"You never asked me, my lord."

"You were only eight or nine years old when I saw you last."

"Isn't it a pity you didn't get yourself engaged to me then? Such
things have been done."

"If the coast were clear I wonder whether you'd take me now."

"The coast isn't clear, Lord Brotherton."

"No, by George. I wish it were, and so do you too, if you'd dare to say
so."

"You think I should be sure to take you."

"I think you would. I should ask you at any rate. I'm not so old by ten
years as Houghton."

"Your age would not be the stumbling block."

"What then?"

"I didn't say there would be any. I don't say that there would not.
It's a kind of thing that a woman doesn't think of."

"It's just the kind of thing that women do think of."

"Then they don't talk about it, Lord Brotherton. Your brother you know
did want me to marry him."

"What, George? Before Houghton?"

"Certainly;--before I had thought of Mr. Houghton."

"Why the deuce did you refuse him? Why did you let him take that
little----" He did not fill up the blank, but Mrs. Houghton quite
understood that she was to suppose everything that was bad. "I never
heard of this before."

"It wasn't for me to tell you."

"What an ass you were."

"Perhaps so. What should we have lived upon? Papa would not have given
us an income."

"I could."

"But you wouldn't. You didn't know me