“There is some truth in that, my poor Mouse, I must allow,” said her brother with a shade of unwilling sympathy in his tone. “But it’s a beggarly rotten system to live your lives out on, and I think Broadstairs would be the better part, if you could only make up your mind to it. It would be only one effort instead of a series of efforts, and the cheap trippers wouldn’t be worse than the Mastodons; at least you wouldn’t have to do so much for them.” “Massarenes,” said his sister with an impatient dive for the silver poker, and another dive with it at the fire. “The name isn’t such a bad name. It might have been Healy, it might have been Murphy.” “It might have even been Biggar,” replied Hurstmanceaux, amused. “Possibilities in the ways of horror are infinite when we once begin opening our doors to people whom nobody knows. Practically, there need be no end to it.” Mouse, leaning softly against her brother, with her hand caressing the lapel of his coat, said sweetly and insidiously: “There is an only daughter, Ronald--an only child.” “Indeed!” “She will be an immense heiress,” sighed his sister. “Everybody will be after her.” “Everybody bar one,” said her brother. “And why bar one?” His face darkened. “Don’t talk nonsense!” he said curtly. “I don’t like you when you are impertinent. It is a pity Cocky ever saw you; the Massarene alliance would have suited _him_ down to the ground.” “She would have been millions of miles too good for him!” said Cocky’s wife, with boundless contempt. “They don’t want merely rank; they want character.” “My dear Mouse,” said Hurstmanceaux, “the other day a young fellow went into a _café_ in Paris, had a good soup, fish, and _roti_, _and_ three cups of coffee. An unfeeling landlord arrested him as he was about to go off without paying. The people in the streets pitied him, on the whole, but they thought the three cups of coffee too much. ‘_Ca c’est trop fort de café_,’ said a workman in a blouse to me. In a similar manner, allow me to remark that if your new friends, in addition to the smart dinner of rank, require the strong coffee of character, they are too exacting. The people in the streets won’t let them have both.” Lady Kenilworth felt very angry at this impudent anecdote, and pulled to pieces some narcissus standing near her in an old china bowl. “The analogy don’t run on all fours,” she said petulantly. “_My_ people can pay. You have a right to anything if you only pay enough for it.” “Most things--not everything quite,” said her brother indolently, as he took up his hat and cane and whistled his collie dog, who was playing with the Blenheims. “Not everything quite--yet,” he repeated, as if the declaration refreshed him. “You have not the smallest effect upon me, and you will not present your _protégés_ to me--remember that, once for all. Adieu!” Then he touched her lightly and affectionately on her fair hair, shook himself like a dog who has been in dirty water, and left her.