‘I am sorry you did not go up to my place,’ says he, addressing Miss Prior. ‘It is quite a terrible thing to contemplate, your having been in want of flowers.’ ‘Ah, but you weren’t there!’ says Josephine, with a mild attempt at coquetry. ‘If you had been, we might have made a raid on you.’ ‘Well, I’m at home now,’ says Crosby cheerfully. ‘You must come down some day soon, and help me to gather my roses.’ ‘You mean to stay, then?’ says Josephine, leaning a little towards him across her mother. She is quite bent on marrying her cousin, though she is as indifferent to him as he is to her; but in the meantime she is not above a slight flirtation with Crosby. To tell the truth, this big, good-humoured, handsome man appeals to her far more than Paul has ever done. ‘Until the autumn, at all events,’ says he. As for Wyndham, he is still sitting mute, apparently listening to his aunt’s diatribes about society, and Dublin society in particular, but in reality raging over Mrs. Denis’s shortcomings, and the deplorable Irish sympathetic nature that has led her to sacrifice everything—even the excellent situation she has at the Cottage—to a mere passing fancy for a girl whom she has known at the longest for four or five weeks. Crosby, noting his abstraction, is still rattling along. ‘Now, it’s a promise, Mrs. Prior, isn’t it? You’—here he glances deliberately at Josephine—‘you will come and look round my place soon, won’t you? I’m thinking of making up a little house-party in September or August, and I hope you and Miss Prior will leave a week open for me.’ He throws a look over his shoulder. ‘You too, Wyndham?’ ‘Thank you,’ says Paul absently. ‘What a charming idea!’ cries Josephine ecstatically. Here she decides upon clapping her hands, and she does it in her perfectly well-bred way. The result is deadly. ‘To stay with a bachelor! Mamma, you will consent?’ Mamma consents. Josephine, again leaning towards Crosby, says something delightful to him. It has seemed to her since Crosby’s coming that to have two strings to your bow is a very desirable thing. Paul is well enough, and in the end, of course, she will marry him, though at times she has thought that he——But, of course, that is nonsense. He would be afraid to marry anyone else—afraid of his uncle. What a pity he is not Mr. Crosby, or Mr. Crosby Paul! Well, one can’t have everything one’s own way, after all, and there is the title. Lady Shangarry—Mrs. Crosby. Yes; the title counts. But really Paul is so very dull, and Mr. Crosby, though he has no title, so infinitely better off than Paul will ever be, and the Crosbys are an old family, dating back to—goodness knows when! Still, a title! Finally she gets back to the title, and stays there.