"Silly! my good child. _How_ silly! Why everything goes to prove the probability of my statement. The taste for articles of _vertu_--for antiquities--for fossils of all descriptions that characterized them then, has lived to the present day. _Then_ they worried after old china, and who shall deny that now they have an overwhelming affection for old clo'." "Well; your folly doesn't concern me," says Miss Kavanagh, gathering up her skirts with an evident intention of shaking off the dust of his presence from her feet and quitting him. "I am sorry that you should consider it folly," says Mr. Browne sorrowfully. "I should not have said so much about it perhaps but that I wanted to prove to you that in calling _you_ a fleshpot I only meant to----" "I won't be called that," interrupts Miss Kavanagh angrily. "It's _horrid_! It makes me feel quite _fat_! Now, once for all, Dicky, I forbid it. I won't have it." "I don't see how you are to get out of it," says Mr. Browne, shaking his head and hands in wild deprecation. "Fleshpots were desirable articles--you're another--ergo--you're a fleshpot. See the argument?" "No I don't," indignantly. "I see only you--and--I wish I _didn't_." "Very rude; _very_!" says Mr. Browne, regretfully. "Yet I entreat thee not to leave me without one other word. Follow up the argument--_do_. Give me an answer to it." "Not one," walking to the door. "That's because it is unanswerable," says Mr. Browne complacently. "You are beaten, you----" There is a sound outside the door; Joyce with her hand on the handle of it, steps back and looks round nervously at Dicky. A quick color has dyed her cheeks; instinctively she moves a little to one side and gives a rapid glance into a long mirror. "I don't think really he could find a fault," says Mr. Browne mischievously. "I should think there will be a good deal of hankering going on to-night." Miss Kavanagh has only just barely time to wither him, when Beauclerk comes hurriedly in. CHAPTER XI. "Thinkest thou there are no serpents in the world But those who slide along the grassy sod, And sting the luckless foot that presses them? There are, who in the path of social life Do bask their spotted skins in fortune's son, And sting the soul." "Oh, there you are," cries he jovially. "Been looking for you everywhere. The music has begun; first dance just forming. Gay and lively quadrille, you know--country ball wouldn't know itself without a beginning like that. Come; come on." Nothing can exceed his _bonhomie_. He tucks her hand in the most delightfully genial, appropriative fashion under his arm, and with a beaming nod to Mr. Browne (he never forgets to be civil to anybody) hurries Joyce out of the room, leaving the astute Dicky gazing after him with mingled feelings in his eye. "Deuce and all of a smart chap," says Mr. Browne to himself slowly. "But he'll fall through some day for all that, I shouldn't wonder."