"MY DEAREST LILLA,--What happiness it gives me to congratulate you on the brilliant future opening to your sweet Flora----" And which would have continued, no doubt, with similar eloquence if it had not been interrupted by Soames opening the door and announcing "Sir Philip Carruthers," who walked in, touched his mother's brow with his moustaches, and went to stand on the hearth with his arm on the mantelpiece. "My dear Philip, you never congratulated me last night; pray do so now!" cried Lady Marabout, delightedly, wiping her pen on the pennon, which a small ormolu knight obligingly carried for that useful purpose. Ladies always wipe their pens as religiously as they bolt their bedroom doors, believe in cosmetics, and go to church on a Sunday. "Was your news of last night true, then?" asked Carruthers, bending forwards to roll Bijou on its back with his foot. "That Goodwood had spoken definitively to her? Perfectly. He proposed to her yesterday at the Frangipane concert--not _at_ the concert, of course, but afterwards, when they were alone for a moment in the conservatories. The Duchess interrupted them--did it on purpose--and he had only time to whisper hurriedly he should come this morning to hear his fate. I dare say he felt tolerably secure of it. Last night I naturally spoke to Flora about it. Oddly enough, she seemed positively to think at first of rejecting him--_rejecting_ him!--only fancy the madness! Between ourselves, I don't think she cares anything about him, but with such an alliance as that, of course I felt it my bounden duty to counsel her as strongly as I could to accept the unequalled position it proffered her. Indeed, it could have been only a girl's waywardness, a child's caprice to pretend to hesitate, for she _is_ very ambitious and very clever, and I would never believe that any woman--and she less than any--would be proof against such dazzling prospects. It would be absurd, you know, Philip. Whether it was hypocrisy or a real reluctance, because she doesn't feel for him the idealic love she dreams of, I don't know, but I put it before her in a way that plainly showed her all the brilliance of the proffered position, and before she bade me good night, I had vanquished all her scruples, if she had any, and I am able to say----" "Good God, what have you done?" "Done?" re-echoed Lady Marabout, vaguely terrified. "Certainly I persuaded her to accept him. She _has_ accepted him probably; he is here now! I should have been a strange person indeed to let any young girl in my charge rashly refuse such an offer." "You induced her to accept him! God forgive you!" Lady Marabout turned pale as death, and gazed at him with undefinable terror. "Philip! You do not mean----" "Great Heavens! have you never seen, mother----?" He leaned his arms on the marble, with his forehead bowed upon them, and Lady Marabout gazed at him still, as a bird at a basilisk.