"It was not that of which I was thinking. A man may have personal gifts which will certainly prevail with a girl young and unsullied by the world, as I suppose is your Marion Fay." "Bosh," he said, laughing. "As far as personal gifts are concerned, one fellow is pretty nearly the same as another. A girl has to be good-looking. A man has got to have something to buy bread and cheese with. After that it is all a mere matter of liking and disliking--unless, indeed, people are dishonest, which they very often are." Up to this period of his life Lord Hampstead had never met any girl whom he had thought it desirable to make his wife. It was now two years since the present Marchioness had endeavoured to arrange an alliance between him and her own niece, Lady Amaldina Hauteville. This, though but two years had passed since, seemed to him to have occurred at a distant period of his life. Very much had occurred to him during those two years. His political creed had been strengthened by the convictions of others, especially by those of George Roden, till it had included those advanced opinions which have been described. He had annoyed, and then dismayed, his father by his continued refusal to go into Parliament. He had taken to himself ways of living of his own, which gave to him the manners and appearance of more advanced age. At that period, two years since, his stepmother still conceived high hopes of him, even though he would occasionally utter in her presence opinions which seemed to be terrible. He was then not of age, and there would be time enough for a woman of her tact and intellect to cure all those follies. The best way of curing them, she thought, would be by arranging a marriage between the heir to the Marquisate and the daughter of so distinguished a conservative Peer as her brother-in-law, Lord Persiflage. Having this high object in view, she opened the matter with diplomatic caution to her sister. Lady Persiflage had at that moment begun to regard Lord Llwddythlw as a possible son-in-law, but was alive to the fact that Lord Hampstead possessed some superior advantages. It was possible that her girl should really love such a one as Lord Hampstead,--hardly possible that there should be anything romantic in a marriage with the heir of the Duke of Merioneth. As far as wealth and rank went there was enough in both competitors. She whispered therefore to her girl the name of the younger aspirant,--aspirant as he might be hoped to be,--and the girl was not opposed to the idea. Only let there be no falling to the ground between two stools; no starving for want of fodder between two bundles of hay! Lord Llwddythlw had already begun to give symptoms. No doubt he was bald; no doubt he was pre-occupied with Parliament and the county. There was no doubt that his wife would have to encounter that touch of ridicule which a young girl incurs when she marries a man altogether removed beyond the world of romance.