"Serious indeed, mother, if they tend matrimony-wards!" smiled Carruthers. "It's a very serious time indeed for unwary sparrows when they lend an ear to the call-bird, and think about hopping on to the lime-twigs. I should think it's from a sense of compunction for the net you've led us into, that you all particularize our attentions, whenever they point near St. George's, by that very suggestive little adjective 'serious!' Yes, I am half afraid poor Goodey is a little touched. He threw over our Derby sweepstakes up at Hornsey Wood yesterday to go and stifle himself in Willis's rooms at your bazaar, and buy a guinea cup of Souchong from Valencia; and, considering he's one of the best shots in England, I don't think you could have a more conclusive, if you could have a more poetic, proof of devoted renunciation. _I_'d fifty times rather get a spear in my side, à la Ivanhoe, for a woman than give up a Pigeon-match, a Cup-day, or a Field-night!" "You'll never do either!" laughed Lady Marabout, who made it one of her chief troubles that her son would not marry, chiefly, probably, because if he _had_ married she would have been miserable, and thought no woman good enough for him, would have been jealous of his wife's share of his heart, and supremely wretched, I have no doubt, at his throwing himself away, as she would have thought it, had his handkerchief lighted on a Princess born, lovely as Galatea, and blessed with Venus's cestus. "Never, _plaise à Dieu_!" responded her son, piously over his ice; "but if Goodwood's serious, what's Cardonnel? _He_'s lost his head, if you like, after the Valletort beauty." "Major Cardonnel!" said Lady Marabout, hastily. "Oh no, I don't think so. I hope not--I trust not." "Why so? He's one of the finest fellows in the Service." "I dare say; but you see, my dear Philip, he's not--not--desirable." Carruthers stroked his moustaches and laughed: "Fie, fie, mother! if all other Belgraviennes are Mammon-worshippers, I thought you kept clear of the paganism. I thought your freedom from it was the only touch by which you weren't 'purely feminine,' as the lady novelists say of their pet bits of chill propriety." "Worship Mammon! Heaven forbid!" ejaculated Lady Marabout. "But there are duties, you see, my dear; your friend is a very delightful man, to be sure; I like him excessively, and if Valencia felt any _great_ preference for him----" "You'd feel it _your_ duty to counsel her to throw him over for Goodwood." "I never said so, Philip," interrupted Lady Marabout, with as near an approach to asperity as she could achieve, which approach was less like vinegar than most people's best honey. "But you implied it. What are 'duties' else, and why is poor Cardonnel 'not desirable'?" Lady Marabout played a little tattoo with her spoon in perplexity. "My dear Philip, you know as well as I do what I mean. One might think you were a boy of twenty to hear you!"