Maxfield was weaving speculations in connection with the young man, of so wild and fanciful a nature as would have astonished his most familiar friends, could they have peeped into the brain inside his grizzled old head. But this rose-coloured condition of things did not last. One afternoon, Mrs. Errington looked into his little sitting-room, on her way upstairs, and finding him with an account-book, in which he was, not making, but reading entries, she stepped in, and began to chat; if any speech so laboriously condescending as hers to Mr. Maxfield may be thus designated. Her theme, of course, was her son, and her son's prospects. "That'll be all very fine for Mr. Algernon, to be sure," said old Max, slowly, after some time, "but--it'll cost money." "Not so much as you think for. Low persons who feel themselves in a false position, no doubt find it necessary to make a show. But a real gentleman can afford to be simple." "But I take it he'll have to afford other things besides being simple! He'll have to afford clothes, and lodging, and maybe food. You aren't rich." Mrs. Errington admitted the fact. "Algernon ought to find a wife with a bit o' money," said the old man, looking straight and hard into the lady's eyes. Those round orbs sustained the gaze as unflinchingly as if they had been made of blue china. "It is not at all a bad idea," Mrs. Errington said, graciously. "But then he wouldn't just take the first ugly woman as had a fort'n." "Oh dear no!" "No; nor yet an old 'un." "Good gracious, man! of course not!" "Young, pretty, good, and a bit o' money. That's about his mark, eh?" Mrs. Errington shook her head pathetically. "She ought to have birth, too," she said. "But the woman takes her husband's rank; unless," she added, correcting herself, and with much emphasis, "unless she happens to be the better born of the two." "Oh, she does, eh? The woman takes her husband's rank? Ah! well, that's script'ral. I have never troubled my head about these vain worldly distinctions; but that is script'ral." Mrs. Errington was not there to discuss her landlord's opinions or to listen to them; but he served as well as another to be the recipient of her talk about Algernon, which accordingly she resumed, and indulged in ever-higher flights of boasting. Her mendacity, like George Wither's muse, As it made wing, so it made power. "The fact is, there is more than one young lady on whom my connections in London have cast their eye for Algy. Miss Pickleham, only daughter of the great drysalter, who is such an eminent member of Parliament; Blanche Fitzsnowdon, Judge Whitelamb's lovely niece; one of Major-General Indigo's charming girls, all of them perfect specimens of the Eastern style of beauty--their mother was an Indian princess, and enormously wealthy. But I am in no hurry for my boy to bind himself in an engagement: it hampers a young man's career."