"I know it is hard, Lord Silverdale, but you will do it for my sake!" They were sitting on an ottoman, and the lovely face which looked pleadingly up into his was very near. The young man got up and walked up and down. "Hang it!" he murmured disconsolately. "Can't you try them on Turple the magnificent. Or why not get a music-master or a professor of painting?" "Music-masters touch the wrong chord, and professors of painting are mostly old masters. You are young and polished and can flirt with tact and taste." "Thank you," said the poor young peer, making a wry face. "And therefore I'm to be a flirtation machine." "An electric battery if you like. I don't desire to mince my words. There's no gain in not calling a spade a spade." "And less in people calling a battery a rake." "Is that a joke? I thought you clubmen enjoyed being called rakes." "That is all most of us do enjoy. Take it from me that the last thing a rake does is to sow wild oats." "I know enough of agriculture not to be indebted to you for the information. But I certainly thought you were a rake," said the little girl, looking up at him with limpid brown eyes. "You flatter me," he said with a mock bow; "you are young enough to know better." "But you have seen Society (and theatres) in a dozen capitals!" "I have been behind the scenes of both," he answered simply. "That is the thing to keep a man steady." "I thought it turned a man's head," she said musingly. "It does. Only one begins manhood with his head screwed the wrong way on. Homoeopathy is the sole curative principle in morals. Excuse this sudden discharge of copy-book mottoes. I sometimes go off that way, but you mustn't take me for a Maxim gun. I am not such a bore, I hope." Lillie flew off at a feminine tangent. "All of which only proves the wisdom of my choice in selecting you." "What! To pepper them with pellets of platitude?" he said, dropping despairingly into an arm-chair. "No. With eyeshot. Take care!" "What's the matter?" "You're sitting on an epigram." [Illustration: "_Take care! You're sitting on an epigram._"] The young man started up as if stung, and removed the antimacassar, without, however, seeing the point. "I hope you don't mind my inquiring whether you have any morals," said Lillie. "I have as many as Æsop. The strictest investigation courted. References given and exchanged," said the peer lightly. "Do be serious. You know I have an insatiable curiosity to know everything about everything--to feel all sensations, think all thoughts. That is the note of my being." The brown eyes had an eager, wistful look. "Oh, yes--a note of interrogation." "O that I were a man! What _do_ men think?" "What do _you_ think? Men are human beings first and masculine afterwards. And I think everybody is like a suburban Assembly Hall--to-day a temperance lecture, to-morrow a dance, next day an oratorio, then a farcical comedy, and on Sunday a religious service. But about this appointment?"