“Certainly. Alice has stood to her guns, and as ‘Trust me all in all, or not at all,’ is my motto, we should never get on. As a married couple our career is finished. I remember hearing a cynical old bachelor say that the marriage service, instead of being the prelude to happiness and harmony, was almost always the ceremony that inaugurated a long and arduous campaign, a series of skirmishes, varied with numerous pitched battles. Alice and I have had one desperate engagement, and both vacate the field. We live to fight another day, but not with each other! Our married life was a short one--barely four months--and I find myself once more a bachelor; for as Alice declares she is not my wife, and as I equally solemnly declare that the other is not my wife, I conclude I am single. What do you think, Helen?” “I think you are talking a great deal of nonsense, my dear Regy, and though you rail at matrimony _now_, in your heart you know very well that the last four months were the happiest of your life. You need not deny it, and if you did it would be useless. Go on,” waving her fan imperiously, “go on; tell me what you are going to do about Alice.” “Of course she must bear my name and live in my house, but that will be the only tie between us. Unfortunately I am her guardian, a post I would willingly relinquish; but it is out of the question to do so. However, my solicitor will manage to represent me as much as possible. I do not intend to be brought personally into contact with Alice, much less with Miss Fane, who has fanned the flame with all her might, Geoffrey tells me.” “And how have you managed?” “I have opened an account in Alice’s name at Drummond’s, and made her an allowance of five thousand a-year. Her own money she cannot touch till she is one-and-twenty, excepting five hundred a-year, which her father very wisely thought ample for a girl in her teens.” “Then why increase it?” “My dear Helen, where is your common sense? Alice will have an establishment to keep up befitting her position as a married woman. I intend her to live at Monkswood, which has always been a kind of dower house. I shall shut up Looton, dismiss most of the servants, and send all the horses up to Tattersall’s on Saturday. I am going abroad for a month previous to returning to India, and start for Vienna the day after to-morrow. Now I think I have told you all my plans; have you any exception to take to them?” he inquired, drinking off his coffee and setting down his cup.