"When will Goodwood propose?" wondered Lady Marabout, fifty times a day, and Valencia Valletort wondered too. Whitebait was being eaten, and yachts being fitted, manned, and victualled, outstanding Ascot debts were being settled, and outstanding bills were being passed hurriedly through St. Stephen's; all the clockwork of the season was being wound up for the last time previous to a long standstill, and going at a deuce of a pace, as if longing to run down, and give its million wheels and levers peace; while everybody who'd anything to settle, whether monetary or matrimonial, personal or political, was making up his mind about it and getting it off his hands, and some men were being pulled up by wide-awake Jews to see what they were "made of," while others were pulled up by adroit dowagers to know what they had "meant" before the accounts of the season were scored out and settled. "Had Goodwood proposed?" asked all Belgravia. "Why hadn't Goodwood proposed?" asked Lady Marabout and Valencia. Twenty most favorable opportunities for the performance of that ceremony had Lady Marabout made for him "accidentally on purpose" the last fortnight; each of those times she had fancied the precious fish hooked and landed, and each time she had seen him, free from the hook, floating on the surface of society. "He _must_ speak definitely to-morrow," thought Lady Marabout. But the larvæ of to-morrow burst into the butterfly of to-day, and to-day passed into the chrysalis of yesterday, and Goodwood was always very nearly caught, and never _quite_! "Come up-stairs, Philip; I want to show you a little Paul Potter I bought the other day," said Lady Marabout one morning, returning from a shopping expedition to Regent Street, meeting her son at her own door just descending from his tilbury. "Lord Goodwood calling, did you say, Soames? Oh, very well." And Lady Marabout floated up the staircase, but signed to her footman to open the door, not of the drawing-room, but of her own boudoir. "The Potter is in my own room, Philip; you must come in here if you wish to see it," said that adroit lady, for the benefit of Soames. But when the door was shut, Lady Marabout lowered her voice confidentially: "The Potter isn't here, dear; I had it hung in the little cabinet through the drawing-rooms, but I don't wish to go up there for a few moments--you understand." Carruthers threw himself in a chair, and laughed till the dogs Bijou, Bonbon, and Pandore all barked in a furious concert. "I understand! So Goody's positively coming to the point up there, is he?" "No doubt he is," said Lady Marabout, reprovingly. "Why else should he come in when I was not at home? There is nothing extraordinary in it. The only thing I have wondered at is his having delayed so long." "If a man had to hang himself, would you wonder he put off pulling the bolt?"