“Dear friend,” interposed the Duchess with infinite tact, gently lifting him by the tails of his dress coat, “I am waiting for your arm.” CHAPTER II Lothaw was immensely rich. The possessor of seventeen castles, fifteen villas, nine shooting-boxes, and seven town houses, he had other estates of which he had not even heard. Everybody at Plusham played croquet, and none badly. Next to their purity of blood and great wealth, the family were famous for this accomplishment. Yet Lothaw soon tired of the game, and after seriously damaging his aristocratically large foot in an attempt to “tight croquet” the Lady Aniseed’s ball, he limped away to join the Duchess. “I’m going to the hennery,” she said. “Let me go with you; I dearly love fowls—broiled,” he added thoughtfully. “The Duke gave Lady Montairy some large Cochins the other day,” continued the Duchess, changing the subject with delicate tact. “Lady Montairy Quite contrairy, How do your Cochins grow?” sang Lothaw gayly. The Duchess looked shocked. After a prolonged silence Lothaw abruptly and gravely said:— “If you please, ma’am, when I come into my property I should like to build some improved dwellings for the poor, and marry Lady Coriander.” “You amaze me, dear friend; and yet both your aspirations are noble and eminently proper,” said the Duchess. “Coriander is but a child,—and yet,” she added, looking graciously upon her companion, “for the matter of that, so are you.” CHAPTER III Mr. Putney Giles’s was Lothaw’s first grand dinner-party. Yet, by carefully watching the others, he managed to acquit himself creditably, and avoided drinking out of the finger-bowl by first secretly testing its contents with a spoon. The conversation was peculiar and singularly interesting. “Then you think that monogamy is simply a question of the thermometer?” said Mrs. Putney Giles to her companion. “I certainly think that polygamy should be limited by isothermal lines,” replied Lothaw. “I should say it was a matter of latitude,” observed a loud, talkative man opposite. He was an Oxford professor with a taste for satire, and had made himself very obnoxious to the company, during dinner, by speaking disparagingly of a former well-known chancellor of the exchequer,—a great statesman and brilliant novelist,—whom he feared and hated. Suddenly there was a sensation in the room; among the females it absolutely amounted to a nervous thrill. His Eminence, the Cardinal, was announced. He entered with great suavity of manner, and after shaking hands with everybody, asking after their relatives, and chucking the more delicate females under the chin with a high-bred grace peculiar to his profession, he sat down, saying, “And how do we all find ourselves this evening, my dears?” in several different languages, which he spoke fluently.