"In the suburbs," said the Duke, "we will take some nice house and call it the Chateau de Montvillier with a nice garden——" "And a nice coachhouse and hot and cold water," she went on icily, "with a month at Margate every summer and a round of local pantomimes every winter—thank you." "As for myself," said the Duke dreamily, "I shall stand for the Board of Guardians——" "What!" "Board of Guardians," said the Duke firmly, "it has been one of my life’s dreams: in far-away San Pio in my cow punching days, when I used to lie out on the prairie, all alone, with the great stars glittering and the unbroken solitude of the wilderness about me, that was the thought that comforted me; the whispered hope that buoyed me up. To be a guardian! The trees in their rustling murmured the word, the far-off howl of the prairie dog was, to my fevered imagination, the voice of the chairman calling the Board to order." "But seriously?" she pleaded, "please, please be serious." "I _am_ serious," said the indignant Duke, "Brockley is nature, and all that pertains to Brockley is nature. Why even Tuppy sees that! When I told him that the Mayor didn’t wear robes and didn’t have a mace bearer, the poor chap nearly wept for joy, he’s staying——" "I am not interested in what Tuppy thinks," she said coldly, "or what Tuppy has planned. What interests me is the fact that I have no intention whatever of spending my life in the suburbs, so there." I wonder if "so there" an expression that a lady, who had at one time lived in Portland Place, would use? I wonder—— Alicia Terrill was angry, and not without cause. Women have no sense of men’s humour, and I do not think the Duke was tactful. He was a young man who took things for granted. Had Alicia been an heiress, she might have entered into the spirit of the Duke’s humour. She could have afforded the whim. But she was not rich. Money is a horrid thing, and especially horrid to the poor girl who marries the rich man, however sincere and whole hearted her love is for him, and his for her. For there comes, and there must come, an unpleasant feeling of dependence, a sensation such as must have been experienced by the unfortunate negroes who lived in Uncle Tom’s Cabin (and nowhere else), when the whip of the overseer cracked, that is particularly irksome to a girl of independent character. The Duke, as I say, took much for granted. Money was as nothing to him, he did not count it as a serious factor in life. People with money seldom do. You may say, having in mind the incidence of the Duke’s tempestuous wooing, that there was little solid foundation for a true and abiding companionship such as marriage implies; that the ground was already prepared for misunderstandings. Perhaps your judgment is correct: in offering my own opinion, in all modesty, I venture to differ, because I know the Duke intimately.