"Well, good night, Kate; good night, old lady. If you pick up any thing good in Yorkshire, let's how, there's a Stunner! I've promised to mount my sister next season, and she sha'n't ride any thing you don't warrant. Good night, Beresford; good night, old lady;" and with hearty hand-shakes to Kate, and nods to Beresford, Captain Charleville and Tom Burton took themselves off. "Now, Charley," said Kate, leaning forward on the table while Beresford lit a fresh cigar and threw himself back in his chair,--"now, Charley, tell us all about it." "About what?" asked Beresford, rolling the leaf of his cigar round with his finger. "That is good, by Jove! You say you want to talk to me, and you begin by asking me to tell you all about it!" "I mean about yourself. You're horribly low, and dull, and slow, and wretched. You've scarcely spoken all the evening, and you ate no dinner, and you drank a great deal of wine." "You're a pretty hostess, Kitty! You've checked off my dinner like the keeper of a _table-d'hôte_." "Well, you know you might drink the cellar dry, if you liked. But you're all out of sorts, Charley; tell me all about it, I say!" "You certainly are a strange specimen, Stunner," said Beresford, still calmly occupied with his cigar-leaf; "but there's a wonderful deal of good in you, and I don't mind telling you what I wouldn't say to any one else. I'm done up, Kitty; run the wrong side of the post; distanced, old lady. I've been hit frightfully hard all this year; my book for the Leger looks awful; I owe pots of money, and I am very nearly done." "My poor Charley!" said the girl, bending forward, with deep interest in her face. "That certainly is a blue look-out," she continued,--for however earnest was her purpose, she could not but express herself in her slang metaphor. "Is there nothing to fall back upon?" "Nothing; no resource, save one--and that I'm going to look after at once--marriage!" "Marriage!" "Yes; if I could pick up a woman with money, I'd settle down into a regular quiet humdrum life. I'd cut the turf, and ride a bishop's cob, and give good dinners, and go to church, and be regularly respectable, by Jove! I should make a good husband, too; I think I should; only--the worst of it is, that these women with money, by some dispensation of nature, are generally so frightfully hideous." "Yes," said the girl, who had pushed her hands through her hair, and then clenched them tightly in front of her, and who was looking at him with staring, earnest eyes. "I can't fancy you married, Charley; that's quite a new view of matters; and, as you say, the rich women are not generally pretty. You can't have every thing, Charley?" "No," said Beresford, gloomily. "I know that; and it would be deuced hard lines to have to take a Gorgon about with you, and to have to glare at a plain-headed woman sitting opposite you for the rest of your life. But need must--what am I to do?"