"My dear Paul, you will have to be careful; how clever you are! I never thought of that." And this new idea made Lady Lyons hold her knitting so carelessly that she dropped some stitches, a fact (as usual) she never discovered till she had done a good bit, when she was intensely surprised to see a very large hole, and could not imagine how it got there. "I don't know about being clever, mother, the girls make no secret of it to _me_." "My dear Paul! is it as far on as that?" and Lady Lyons looked up at him from her sofa with a truly admiring maternal look. "I don't know what you mean by as far as that," said Paul, inserting his first finger with immense difficulty between his tight masher collar and his much harassed throat; "but they talk in a way I cannot help understanding. Old Sandford is coining money and saving money, that means something like wealth to his heirs or heiresses." "It does indeed," said Lady Lyons, with sparkling eyes. "Paul, it is so strange, but when you were quite a tiny baby your poor old nurse used always to say you were born to marry a rich lady. How often I laughed at her--and now it will come true. My dear boy!" "I think you are going too far now, mother; I feel a long way behind you. I cannot find out anything about any definite promise. We do not know anything about Mr. Sandford." "I know a great deal about him," said Lady Lyons, eagerly. "Mrs. Dorriman talks so much about him; not that perhaps she has really told me much," she added, with a sense of having held out false hopes; Mrs. Dorriman's confidences about her brother being, she now remembered, entirely about frivolous matters, his fondness of old-fashioned dishes, and so on, and his dislike to others. "Of course, mother, I shall be careful not to lead either of the young ladies to fancy I am in earnest till I know something definite." "Of course not, my dear," said Lady Lyons, absently. Then suddenly a look of intelligence came into her face. "Oh! my dear Paul, how stupid I am. I remember quite distinctly now, Mrs. Dorriman answered some remark I made about Margaret's looks, and said, 'I admire her very much, and I am sure my brother does, he never takes his eyes off her. He says she is the image of his wife, and like her in disposition; that is why he is so devoted to her.' I remember her words so well now; but I can easily talk about it again and get her to tell me something more." "I think she told you enough," laughed her son, and he walked up to the window humming a tune, and his mother, after trying in vain to get him to talk to her, soon grew sleepy and went to bed. Long after she left he paced the room; then he lit his candle and prepared to go to bed also. There was a smile upon his face, which lingered till he was fairly in bed. Then he murmured something to himself, "I am glad it is Margaret," he said, and turned round and went to sleep.