‘Humph! perhaps she might. I’m not quite certain; but who is she to be?’ ‘Do you remember a visit we made together to a certain Kilgobbin Castle.’ ‘To be sure I do. A rum old ruin it was.’ ‘Do you remember two young ladies we met there?’ ‘Perfectly. Are you going to marry both of them?’ ‘My intention is to propose to one, and I imagine I need not tell you which?’ ‘Naturally, the Irish girl. She saved your life--’ ‘Pray let me undeceive you in a double error. It is not the Irish girl; nor did she save my life.’ ‘Perhaps not; but she risked her own to save yours. You said so yourself at the time.’ ‘We’ll not discuss the point now. I hope I feel duly grateful for the young lady’s heroism, though it is not exactly my intention to record my gratitude in a special license.’ ‘A very equivocal sort of repayment,’ grumbled out Lockwood. ‘You are epigrammatic this evening, major.’ ‘So, then, it’s the Greek you mean to marry?’ ‘It is the Greek I mean to ask.’ ‘All right. I hope she’ll take you. I think, on the whole, you suit each other. If I were at all disposed to that sort of bondage, I don’t know a girl I’d rather risk the road with than the Irish cousin, Miss Kearney.’ ‘She is very pretty, exceedingly obliging, and has most winning manners.’ ‘She is good-tempered, and she is natural--the two best things a woman can be.’ ‘Why not come down along with me and try your luck?’ ‘When do you go?’ ‘By the 10.30 train to-morrow. I shall arrive at Moate by four o’clock, and reach the castle to dinner.’ ‘They expect you?’ ‘Only so far, that I have telegraphed a line to say I’m going down to bid “Good-bye” before I sail for Guatemala. I don’t suspect they know where that is, but it’s enough when they understand it is far away.’ ‘I’ll go with you.’ ‘Will you really?’ ‘I will. I’ll not say on such an errand as your own, because that requires a second thought or two; but I’ll reconnoitre, Master Cecil, I’ll reconnoitre.’ ‘I suppose you know there is no money.’ ‘I should think money most unlikely in such a quarter; and it’s better she should have none than a small fortune. I’m an old whist-player, and when I play dummy, there’s nothing I hate more than to see two or three small trumps in my partner’s hand.’ ‘I imagine you’ll not be distressed in that way here.’ ‘I’ve got enough to come through with; that is, the thing can be done if there be no extravagances.’ ‘Does one want for more?’ cried Walpole theatrically. ‘I don’t know that. If it were only ask and have, I should like to be tempted.’ ‘I have no such ambition. I firmly believe that the moderate limits a man sets to his daily wants constitute the real liberty of his intellect and his intellectual nature.’ ‘Perhaps I’ve no intellectual nature, then,’ growled out Lockwood, ‘for I know how I should like to spend fifteen thousand a year. I suppose I shall have to live on as many hundreds.’ ‘It can be done.’ ‘Perhaps it may. Have another weed?’