“Her conduct is and has been what any with nobility must applaud.” “I thank you for including me amongst the elect.” “My name, madam, should I choose to recover it--as I may--will rank with the oldest and stateliest. I regard it as the meanest bribe to the consideration of one that simple self-respect adorns beyond the favours of kings.” “Ah, me! We poor worldlings! It is well, I see, to go to school to misfortune, and better to pull mugs of ale to country louts. I can congratulate Lady Linne, at least, upon a very knowing taste in liquors.” Mr. Tuke stared in amazement. Here, he could have thought, spoke the bitterness and scorn of jealousy. What if, at his last meeting with her, she had thought fit to stultify her previous insolence by a show of condescension to him that for the moment conveyed its calculated charm? He had looked upon this, on reflection, as a mere move in her game of coquetry--a bait to the sulky lord who “drizzled.” He had hardly dreamed that anything personal to himself could weigh in her balance against broad acres and a title; and nothing she had then said had weaned him from his newly-indulged lust of liberty. Now, all at once it came to him that Mr. Tuke transmogrified might boast attractions to a semi-romantic nature that no titled idiotcy could rival; and at the thought a very rigour of fright seized all his limbs, and he spoke out in quite a tremor of hurry: “I am my lord’s tailor, as you know, madam, and though Mrs. Pollack may not show the best of taste in condescending to me, she hath still done me that honour.” The advantages, where vanity is to receive a blow, are all on the side of breeding. An irrepressible start and glance of astonishment--and Miss Royston found herself in a moment. “Indeed?” she said. “And now I protest my wit is at least equal to hers in foresight. But I applaud your determination to settle down in life at whatever price.” She rippled out a spirited little bravura as she turned to some needlework that lay on the table. The necessity of, at the present crisis, conducting all the comedies of life by candle-light threw a curiously theatrical glamour over the scene. “I hope for Lady Linne’s sake,” said Miss Royston, as she patted her work approvingly, “that a quick end may be put to this very unpleasant predicament. You will be married, of course, the moment you are a free agent again. Perhaps they have a recreant parson amongst our friends at the lodge. They will take to thieving sometimes, I am told. Is not this a pretty stitch? Can Mrs. Pollack thread a needle? She will have had a sampler, I warrant, in the parlour, with a full pot foaming white wool for _remarque_. And I vow, sir, you have never yet asked how it was my lord Dunlone came by his hurt.” “I have not,” said the bewildered baronet. “You said it was but a flesh one, and I confess I attached little importance to it.”