"He has plenty of coin, hasn't he?" asked Montagu. "Your sister has never gone for me--and I'm dreadfully soft under such treatment. When I think of the number of girls I've proposed to, and how gracefully I've always backed out of it afterwards, I really wonder at my own audacity. I never refuse to marry the lady--_pas si bête_: 'I adore you, and we'll be married to-morrow if you like,' I say. 'But you'll have to live with your papa and mamma for the first ten years. Perhaps by that time I might be able to take second-floor lodgings in Bloomsbury, and we could begin housekeeping.'" "You're a privileged pauper," said Captain Vandeleur; "Mr. Hamleigh is quite another kind of individual--and I say that he has behaved in a dastardly manner to my elder sister. Everybody in this house thought that he was in love with her." "You have told us so several times," answered Montagu, coolly, "and we're bound to believe you, don't you know." "I should have thought you'd have had too much spunk to see an old friend's sister jilted in such a barefaced way, Tregonell," said Jack Vandeleur, who had drunk just enough to make him quarrelsome. "You don't mean to say that I'm accountable for his actions, do you?" retorted Leonard. "That's rather a large order." "I mean to say that you asked him here--and you puffed him off as a great catch--and half turned poor little Dop's head by your talk about him. If you knew what an arrant flirt he was you oughtn't to have brought him inside your doors." "Perhaps I didn't know anything about it," answered Leonard, with his most exasperating air. "Then I can only say that if half I've heard is true you ought to have known all about it." "As how?" "Because it's common club-talk that he flirted with your wife--was engaged to her--and was thrown off by her on account of his extremely disreputable antecedents. Your mother has the sole credit of the throwing off, by-the-by." "You had better leave my mother's name and my wife's name out of your conversation. That's twenty-eight to me, Monty. Poker has spoiled a capital break by his d----d personality." "I beg your pardon--Mrs. Tregonell is simply perfect, and there is no woman I more deeply honour. But still you must allow me to wonder that you ever let that man cross your threshold." "You are welcome to go on wondering. It's a wholesome exercise for a sluggish brain." "Game," exclaimed Mr. Montagu; and Leonard put his cue in the rack, and walked away, without another word to either of his guests. "He's a dreadful bear," said little Monty, emptying the tankard; "but you oughtn't to have talked about the wife, Poker--that was bad form." "Does he ever study good form when he talks of my people? He had no business to bring that fine gentleman here to flirt with my sister."