He closes her somewhat reluctant fingers over the check. She is still blushing, and has her eyes fixed on the ground, but her faint anger has disappeared. Then some thought--evidently a merry one--occurs to her; the corners of her mouth widen, and finally she breaks into a musical laugh. "Thank you--very much," she says. "You are very good. It is something to have a husband, after all. And--if you would really care for it--I--don't mind letting you have one----Oh! here is somebody coming." "There always _is_ somebody coming when least wanted," exclaims Sir Penthony, wrathfully, pushing back his chair with much suppressed ire, as the door opens to admit Mr. Potts. "'I hope I don't intrude,'" says Potts, putting his comfortable face and rosy head round the door; "but I've got an idea, and I must divulge it or burst. You wouldn't like me to burst, would you?" This to Lady Stafford, pathetically. "I would not,--here," replies she, with decision. "For fear you might, I shall take my departure," says Sir Penthony, who has not yet quite recovered either his disappointment or his temper, walking through the conservatory into the grounds beyond. "I really wish, Plantagenet," says Lady Stafford, turning upon the bewildered Potts with most unaccountable severity, "you could manage to employ your time in some useful way. The dreadful manner in which you spend your days, wandering round the house without aim or reason, causes me absolute regret. _Do_ give yourself the habit of reading or--or doing something to improve your mind, whenever you have a spare moment." So saying, she sweeps past him out of the room, without even making an inquiry about that priceless idea, leaving poor Potts rooted to the ground, striving wildly, but vainly, to convict himself of some unpardonable offense. CHAPTER XXII. "Love, thou art bitter." --Blaine. Mr. Amherst, having in a weak moment given his consent to the ball, repays himself by being as unamiable afterward as he can well manage. "You can have your music and the supper from London, if you wish it," he says to Marcia, one day, when he has inveighed against the whole proceeding in language that borders on the abusive; "but if you think I am going to have an army of decorators down here, turning the house into a fancy bazar, and making one feel a stranger in one's own rooms, you are very much mistaken." "I think you are right, dear," Marcia answers, with her customary meekness: "people of that kind are always more trouble than anything else. And no doubt we shall be able to do all that is necessary quite as well ourselves." "As to that you can, of course, please yourself. Though why you cannot dance without filling the rooms with earwigs and dying flowers I can't conceive."