“That’s just what I want--to leave it to those that like it: you don’t, Patty, and never will!” cried the bold lover. “How do I know? Oh, I know! You’ve gone through a lot, and you think you’ll have something for it, anyhow. Well, so you shall have something for it. Wait till you see the ’ouse that is just waiting till you say the word--ten times better an ’ouse, and folks all about us will be delighted to see you, and as much fun as you can set your face to!” Oh, how powerful and how sweet these arguments were! But to give Greyshott back was a bitter pill to Patty. “I’ll sell it, then,” she said; “it’ll bring in a deal of money;” and this was what Miss Hewitt, who was almost mad with opposition, advised, arguing and beseeching till the foam flew from her mouth. But Roger was obstinate. He declared that he would not be instrumental in taking any man’s home from him. “Money’s a different thing,” he said. “One sovereign’s just like another, but one ’ouse ain’t like another.” The telling argument, however, was one which Roger had the cleverness to pick up from a cricket reporter on a daily paper, to whom he had confided his romance. “By George!” cried the journalist, “what a paragraph for my paper!” He said “par,” no doubt, but Patty would not have understood what this meant. When she did take up the idea, and understood that her praises were to be sung and her generosity extolled in every paper, and that the Pierceys would be made to sing small before her, Patty was overcome at last. Her heart swelled as if it would burst with triumph and a sense of greatness when she read that paragraph. She felt it to be altogether just and true. If they had not prosecuted, there was no telling what magnanimity she might not have been equal to, and she accepted the praise as one who had deserved it to the very utmost. “They’ve been in it hundreds and hundreds of years,” she said to the new friends to whom her bridegroom introduced her in London--among whom were several newspaper men, and one who insisted upon getting her portrait for an illustrated paper--“as we have been in the Seven Thorns. Being of an old family myself, I have always felt for them.” This was reported in the little biographical notice which was appended to Mrs. Piercey’s portrait in the illustrated paper, where it was also told that she had been known far and wide as the Lily of the Seven Thorns, and had been carried off by the Squire’s son from many competitors. It made up for much, even for the fact, still bitter to her, that she had been cheated out of her title, and would never be Lady Piercey,--a loss and delusion which sometimes brought tears into her eyes long after she was Roger Pearson’s wife.