Lady Leason looked up quickly. "Take care what you say, Bertram. Don't make Peter jealous! I thought"--she added mischievously--"that it was a case _there_..." At her merry gesture toward him McTaggart laughed. "Only a mild calf-love affair! But I always imagined she'd marry a title." "Well," said the Bishop, "I rather believe it will come to that in the end. I _hear_--but it's quite between ourselves--that he's down on the next list of Birthday honours." "Indeed? A useful man to the party?" McTaggart saw a twinkle come into the prominent short-sighted eyes. "Hardly as a speaker perhaps. But he has a valuable gift--of silence! Very necessary on occasions." Lady Leason smiled subtly. "And, of course," proceeded the Bishop hurriedly--"the Cadells are very wealthy people. With his father-in-law to finance him, and a beautiful wife, he stands a chance of being Lord Fleming some day--of a mythical Castle like Laura's friends ... I forget the name." "D'you mean 'the Crumpets?'" The hostess laughed, mischief in her hazel eyes. "Peter--haven't you heard?----it's too quaint!--I must tell you." She stirred the coffee again, then started with her story. "I don't know if you ever met a dark, excitable little woman, the wife of a big engineer called Crumpe? She always came to my parties, frightfully overdressed and hung round with pearls like a Tecla advertisement. You surely must remember her? Well, this year he was made a peer. He'd given a park somewhere to the people and was a large subscriber to party funds. "Little Mrs. Crumpe was in her glory! She cut all her old friends, drawing a strict line round Belgravia and Mayfair. And what d'you imagine they took for a name? We'd always called them 'the Crumpets,' you know--it seemed to suit them. He had such a 'buttery' manner! And now they're Lord and Lady Quinningborough of Castle Normantayne"--she choked. Tears of mirth stood in her eyes as she leaned, still laughing, toward McTaggart. "It sounds like feudal towers, and a moat, and a drawbridge. But it _isn't_--that's the pure joy! It's not a house at all, it seems, but the name of a tiny village where Crumpet's father owned a farm!" McTaggart roared, and the Bishop's charity was not proof against the infection of her mirth. "Really, it is remarkable, the modern mania for a title." He took off his glasses and wiped them, still faintly shaken with laughter. McTaggart inwardly congratulated himself (and not for the first time) on his determination to drop his foreign honours on landing in England. ("A fine ass I should look now, posing as an Italian Marquis among friends who have known me since college days as Peter McTaggart"--he smiled at the thought.) His principal trouble had been with Mario, but the latter's ignorance of the English tongue and the knowledge that if he talked it would mean his dismissal had made him obedient, albeit sulkily.