"That is always interesting," said Dick; but he took the revelation calmly. "What a lucky fellow! No need to wait upon fortune like the rest of us. To marry--whom? Do I know the lady? I hope she is all that can be desired." "Oh, Mr. Cavendish, that is just the question. There is mamma coming, perhaps she will tell you herself, which would be so much better than if you heard it from me." Mrs. Warrender came up at this moment very glad to see him, and quite willing to disclose their number in Half Moon Street, and to grant a gracious permission that he should call and be "of use," as he offered to be. "I am not a gentleman at large, like Warrender, I am a toiling slave, spending all my time in Lincoln's Inn. But in the evening I can spare a little time--and occasionally at other moments," he added, with a laugh, "when I try. A sufficient motive is the great thing. And of course you will want to go to the play, and the opera, and all that is going on." "Not too much," said Mrs. Warrender. "The air of London is almost enough at first, but come, and we shall see." She said nothing, however, about Theo, nor was there any chance of saying more. But when Cavendish took Chatty downstairs to put her in the carriage (only a cab, but that is natural to country people in town), he hazarded a whisper as they went downstairs, "Remember there is still something to tell me." "Oh yes," she replied, "but mamma herself, I am sure----" "No," he said, "she has nothing to do with it. It is between you and me." This little conference made her wonderfully bright and smiling when she took her place beside her mother. She did not say anything for a time, but when the cab turned into Piccadilly, with its long lines of lights,--an illumination which is not very magnificent now, and was still less magnificent then, but very new and fine to Chatty, accustomed to little more guidance through the dark than that which is given by the light of a lantern or the oil lamp in Mrs. Bagley's shop,--she suddenly said, "Well! London is very pleasant," as if that was a fact of which she was the first discoverer. "Is it not?" said her mother, who was far more disinterested and had not had her judgment biassed by any whisper on the stairs. "I am very glad that you like it, Chatty. That will make my pleasure complete."