'With a pedigree of his family, no doubt, from the grounding of the Ark to the battle of Culloden,' sneered his father. 'Then his family would end soon after ours began,' retorted the son, becoming greatly ruffled now. 'You know, father, we can't count much beyond three generations ourselves.' Lord Fettercairn, wounded thus in his sorest point, grew white with anger. 'We always suspected you of having some secret, Lennard,' said his mother severely. 'Ah, mother, unfortunately, as some one says, a secret is like a hole in your coat--the more you try to hide it, the more it is seen.' 'An aphorism, and consequently vulgar; does _she_ teach you this style of thing?' asked the haughty lady, while Lennard reddened again with annoyance, and gave his dark moustache a vicious twist, but sighed and strove to keep his temper. 'I have found and felt it very bitter, father, to live under false colours,' said he gently and appealingly, 'and to keep that a secret from you both, which should be no secret at all.' 'We would rather not have heard this secret,' replied Lord Fettercairn sternly, while tugging at his sandy-coloured mutton-chop whiskers. 'Then would you have preferred that I should be deceitful to you, and false to the dear girl who loves and trusts me?' 'I do not choose to consider _her_,' was the cold reply. 'But I do, and must, now!' 'Why?' 'Because we are already married--she is my wife,' was the steady response. 'Married!' exclaimed his father and mother with one accord, as they started from their chairs together, and another ominous silence of a minute ensued. 'My poor, lost boy--the prey of an artful minx!' said Lady Fettercairn, looking as if she would like to weep; but tears were rather strangers to her cold blue eyes. 'Mother, dear mother, if you only knew her, you would not talk thus of Flora,' urged Lennard almost piteously. 'If we had it in our power to give love and to withhold it, easy indeed would our progress be through life.' 'Love--nonsense!' 'Save to the two most interested, who are judges of it,' said Lennard. 'Surely you loved my father, and he you.' 'Our case was very different,' replied Lady Fettercairn, in her anger actually forgetting herself so far as to bite feathers off her fan with her firm white teeth. 'How, mother dear?' 'In rank and wealth we were equal.' Lennard sighed, and said: 'I little thought that you, who loved me so, would prove all but one of the mothers of Society.' 'What do you mean, sir?' demanded his father. 'What a writer says.' 'And what the devil does he say?' 'That "love seems such a poor and contemptible thing in their eyes in comparison with settlements. Perhaps they forget their own youth; one does, they say, when he outlives romance. And I suppose bread and butter is better than poetry any day."' 'I should think so.' 'We had other and brilliant views for you,' said his mother in a tone of intense mortification, 'but now----'