“Well, that’s true enough, and I daresay it will all answer very well. Sophy is, I believe, what is generally called a ‘nice girl,’ and has an idea that she is fond of me, which may, or may not, be an illusion. Of the two, father or daughter, I confess I think old Dub himself the best fellow. I like the house too. There’s a _laissez-aller_ about it that is perfectly delicious when contrasted with our home. There is not an atom of _gêne_ at Thanes Court. One may say and do and look as one likes at Mr. Duberly’s house. There are no cranky speeches; no domineering determination that only one person in the house is to lay down the law. I declare that if _our_ home had been the least like that--if our mother resembled in anything that jolly old boy at Thanes Court--I, at the unripe age of--under twenty-one--should probably not be about to tie myself for life--a thing to which, at present, I feel not the least inclination--to a young woman for whom at present--well, there is no use in being over-confidential--if Sophy were as lovely as the Calipegean Venus, or even as attractive and charming as John Beacham’s Irish bride, I shall probably not look much at her face when she has been my wife a year. ‘Think you, if Laura had been Petrarch’s wife, He would have written sonnets all his life?’” he repeated to himself as he walked slowly away through a rarely-used but admirably-proportioned billiard-room into an apartment on the ground floor, which, by prescriptive right, he considered as his own. “Poor Arthur!” Horace said, when he and his sister were left alone; “I had no idea that he cared so little about her. I wonder what my mother will say when she hears it is all settled?” “I wonder, too. Be glad, I should think: but she won’t say so, and will be angry because she was not told while it was going on. _You_ were, I suppose, you close, ill-natured, unbrotherly boy! Of course, those long letters from Atty while he was at Cannes, and which you kept so provokingly to yourself, were all about Sophy Duberly. Now, tell me, Horace--there’s a good, dear boy--didn’t he propose then? I am sure he did, and that he told you all about what he said to Sophy, and what she answered, and--” “Don’t be ridiculous, Kate; _men_” (Horace was nineteen, and the _down_ was beginning to darken on his chin) “are not in the habit of wasting letter-paper on such nonsense. Arthur made running at Cannes, of course, but nothing was settled till he and the Duberlys met the other day in Paris. I am sure that no one ought to wonder at his marrying. People will stare, of course--I mean those who can’t look behind the scenes. They will think it extraordinary that the heir to such a property as my mother’s should marry when he is only one-and-twenty _for money_.” “Not quite for money only. You said just now, yourself, that Sophy was nice--”