“You’re all too sharp for me, my dear. If she goes—and twenty times a week too—why shouldn’t I go once in ever so long? Especially as I like her and Lady Aurora doesn’t.” “Lady Aurora doesn’t? Do you think she’d be guilty of hypocrisy? Lady Aurora delights in her; she won’t let me say that she’s fit to dust the Princess’s shoes. I needn’t tell _you_ how she goes down before them she likes. And I don’t believe you care a button; you’ve something in your head, some wicked game or other, that you think she can hatch for you.” At this he turned round and looked at her a moment, smiling still and whistling just audibly. “Why shouldn’t I care? Ain’t I soft, ain’t I susceptible?” “I never thought I should hear you ask that—after what I’ve seen these four years. For four years she has come, and it’s all for you—as well it might be; yet with your never showing any more sense of what she’d be willing to do for you than if you had been that woollen cat on the hearthrug!” “What would you like me to do? Would you like me to hang round her neck and hold her hand the same as you do?” Muniment asked. “Yes, it would do me good, I can tell you. It’s better than what I see—the poor lady getting spotted and dim like a mirror that wants rubbing.” “How the devil am I to rub her?” Muniment quaintly asked. “You know a good deal, Rosy, but you don’t know everything,” he pursued with a face that gave no sign of seeing a reason in what she said. “Your mind’s too poetical—as full of sounding strings and silver chords as some old, elegant harp. There’s nothing in the world I should care for that her ladyship would be willing to do for me.” “She’d marry you at a day’s notice—she’d do that for you.” “I shouldn’t care a hang for that. Besides, if I was to lay it before her she’d never come into the place again. And I shouldn’t care for that—for you.” “Never mind me; I’ll take the risk!” cried Rosy with high cheer. “But what’s to be gained if I can have her for you without any risk?” “You won’t have her for me or for any one when she’s dead of a broken heart.” “Dead of a broken tea-cup!” said the young man; “And pray what should we live on when you had got us set up?—the three of us without counting the kids.” He evidently was arguing from pure good nature and not in the least from curiosity; but his sister replied as eagerly as if he would be floored by her answer: “Hasn’t she got a hundred a year of her own? Don’t I know every penny of her affairs?” Paul gave no sign of any inward judgement passed on Rosy’s conception of the delicate course or of a superior policy; perhaps indeed, for it is perfectly possible, her question didn’t strike him as having a mixture of motives. He only said with a small, pleasant, patient sigh: “I don’t want the dear old girl’s money.” His sister, in spite of her eagerness, waited twenty seconds; then she flashed at him: “Pray do you like the Princess’s better?” “If I did there’d be much more of it,” he quietly returned.