“If your military experience had extended farther than the superintendence of penitent burglars, you might have known that where the assailing party is weak, a fortress must be taken quickly, or not at all. I declared myself to Rosa this morning. She is delighted with the idea of flourishing at foreign courts in _écrasant_ pink dresses. How I shall tone her down, poor child! and what a hard time we shall both have of it before the scent of the market-garden ceases to cling to her still! I am to speak to papa Grunderson this evening, over his wine. He consumes the best part of a bottle of old port every night, and finishes off at a neighbouring tavern with the gin-and-water of his early manhood. Rosa tells me that he is an indulgent old party, and that I shall not have any difficulty in bringing him to book.” “Then you really think of marrying?” asked Harcourt, thoughtfully. “Really think of marrying? Of course I do. What else should I think of whereby to improve my fortunes? And Rosa will not be so _very_ disagreeable after a good deal of toning down.” “I thought perhaps you might have some lingering regard for----that other person.” The diplomatist turned upon his brother with a frown. “I thought I told you that I didn’t care to discuss that subject,” he said, haughtily. “Drop it, if you please. There are plenty of disagreeable things in _your_ life, I dare say, that I might remember, if I wanted to make myself obnoxious. However, as you have been existing upon a limited supply of oxygen for the last six weeks, I suppose you’re privileged to be cantankerous. I’ll look in at the stables and send you the hack; and if I find you here when I come home to dress, I dare say we shall hit it better. _A bientôt!_” Harcourt Lowther had his gallop in the Park, and punished the livery-stable hack rather severely. It was dusk before he went back to town, and he left the Park by the Prince’s Gate, and rode slowly through the gorgeous dismality of Stuccoville. He walked his horse down the street in which Francis Tredethlyn’s household had been established. Glimmering lights burned feebly in the windows on the second floor, but the gaslit dining-room was blank and empty. Looking up at the dimly lighted windows, Harcourt Lowther wondered if Maude Tredethlyn’s heart, set free all at once from its mercenary bondage, had fluttered back to the lover of her youth. He was strangely tormented by conflicting fancies, and found it hard to strike the balance between his low estimate of woman’s constancy and his very high opinion of his own merits.