“I?” cried his sister with amazement. “I implored her not to marry him. She would have been mad if she had married him. She would not marry him when--when she was wild about him. She married Cocky. She did quite right. The Inversays are utterly ruined. The old people have nothing. The very little he ever had came from his grandmother, old Lady Luce, and that little was--was--well, was got rid of in a year or two. Besides, nothing is so stupid--such a want of sense and _savoir faire_--as to marry a person who has been talked about in connection with you. It is foolish. It confirms things. It makes people laugh. Of course if you get a very great position by it, it’s a different thing. But even in that case I should always say to a woman--at least to a young woman--don’t!” “Why especially to a young woman?” “My dear Ronnie, you are really too stupid for anything! If a woman isn’t young she isn’t likely to have many offers of marriage, is she?” “I see,” replied Hurstmanceaux, and felt once more that beside the worldly wisdom of his sisters he was indeed a novice. “You live in the country till you forget everything,” said Lady Wisbeach. During the visits of the Duchess of Otterbourne to Vale Royal her hostess saw a great change in her. “That pretty creature isn’t what she was, William,” she said to her husband. “She don’t cheek you as she used to do, and she seems quite down in the dumps. Surely it can’t be that she’s fretting on account of the death of that little drunkard?” William Massarene did not look at his wife as he answered. “’Tis want of dollars frets her, my good woman. That’s a disease as ages these young ’uns fast. Thoroughbred mares want gilded oats.” “Deary me! What’s the use of being a duchess if you don’t get gilded oats?” said his wife. She was troubled by the idea of anyone so exalted being brought so low as to want money. Being tender-hearted she redoubled her attentions to her guest, but being tactless she mingled with them a familiarity for which their object would willingly have murdered her, and which she resented all the more bitterly because she was forced to conceal her resentment. He got far beyond all social need of her now. His position was secure in the county, in the country, in the world. Men knew what he was worth both in millions and in mind, and they feared him. He did not scruple to treat them like dirt, as he expressed it, and it was they who wanted him now, they who had to sue for his good offices and bear his snubs. For some few people like Hurstmanceaux he was still only a cad sitting on a pile of money-bags; but these were so very few that they did not count, and he could very well do without them.