"Only mother!" he says, with a gay laugh (how many weeks have passed since last I heard that laugh!) "why, that is much better. Billy always appeared the most formidable rival. I am progressing in your good books. In time I may even be able to vanquish mother." "I am so glad I made that onslaught on your door a little while ago," declare I, merrily, "and I think you were very undecided about letting me in. How good it is to be quite friends again! and we have not been that for a long time. Oh, is not jealousy a horrible pain?" "'And to be wroth with those we love Doth work like madness on the brain,'" quotes 'Duke softly. "It all began by Mark Gore telling me you were once engaged to Blanche Going." "What a lie!" cries 'Duke, so eagerly that I cannot choose but believe him. "How often am I to tell you I never loved any one but you?" "That is another thing. Men always imagine when they form a new attachment that the old ones contained no real love. What I should like to know is, how many you asked to marry you." My words are uttered jestingly, yet his face changes, very slightly, ever so little, yet it certainly changes. Only a little pallor, a little faint contraction nothing more. It is gone almost as soon as it is there. "I never asked Blanche, at all events," he laughs, lightly. And not until many days have come and gone, do I remember his singular hesitation. CHAPTER XXVII. Two days have passed--two days that have brought back to me all the light and life and gladness of my girlhood. Never since my marriage have I been so happy as now. Marmaduke and I are the best of friends, there is not so much as a shadow of a cloud between us, and I have convinced myself that, as I was the most foolish girl in the world, so am I now the luckiest, and that 'Duke is the dearest old boy to be found anywhere. If I still feel guilty of having no passionate attachment for my husband, I console myself with the thought that I am probably incapable of a grand passion, and that haply I shall get through life all the more comfortably in consequence. Harriet and Bebe notice the new relations existing between me and my husband with undisguised pleasure, but wisely make no comment. Sir James sees it too, and once, in passing me, smiles, and pats me approvingly on the shoulder. Dora and George Ashurst are too much taken up with each other and their approaching nuptials to notice anything but their own tastes and predilections. But Blanche Goring sees it with an evil sneer. --- It is three o'clock in the afternoon. Outside, the world is looking cold and uninviting; inside, all is warmth and apparent contentment. Some of us are in the billiard-room, knocking about the balls, but doing more talk than honest work. I for my part am starting for a brisk run to the gardens, with a view to bringing Cummins to order.