“So he was--he hoped to better himself by marrying her, however. She showed me several letters that he had written to her--clever letters, but still such letters as would be received with laughter, in brackets, if read in a court of law. Well, he left that town and went to a larger, and having worked himself into a better position, he found that to marry the girl would be to marry beneath him--that was the girl’s phrase--‘to marry beneath him’--so he engaged himself--also in secret--to a girl above him in social position; but in the meantime he had worked himself up and up until he came to London and was a sufficiently important person to get me to engage myself to him--in secret too--and--that’s the whole story the young lady had to tell only--yes, I forgot: before he met her he had actually engaged himself to a girl in Lynnthorpe--a grocer’s daughter in the town--Miss Burden found that out also. Was there ever anything so amusing heard since the world began--such a comedy of courtships! He had been gradually working himself up through the whole gamut of the social scale until he reached the dizzy height represented by me--me! But there is a sublimer height even than me, and now he shall have his chance of reaching it.” “And we have always thought him so clever!” “So he is. But the cleverest men that have ever lived have had their weaknesses. His little weakness seems to have been the secret engagement. It appears that he has never been able to resist it. He has gone from one girl to another like a butterfly. He will marry the daughter of a Duke now.” “You believed the girl--Miss Burden?” said Amber in a tone that suggested suspicion. Josephine laughed and patted her hand. “He came into the room while we were together,” she said. “Oh!” “He had not been to see me since Tuesday, and to-day is Saturday; he thought it better on the whole to let me get accustomed to the situation which was the natural sequel to the announcement in the papers. But he came to-day. He met the other girl--one of the other girls--face to face. You never saw anything so funny. For a moment I thought that he would make the attempt to strangle her as the villain on the stage does. But he did nothing of the sort. ‘I have just been telling Miss West that the day you marry her, I shall bring up an action against you and give the leader writers of the Opposition a chance of showing off their cleverness in dealing with the case of Burden v. Clifton,’ said she quite nicely. And he was dumb--absolutely dumb! ‘But Miss West has too high a regard for Mr. Clifton to precipitate such an event,’ said I, and then my father came into the room.” “More comedy!”