'I will, sweet Constance. And for your sake, just to our two selves, I repeat that the painted----' 'Oh!' 'The ruddled----' 'Oh, hush!' 'The bewigged----' 'Edward!' 'Old hag--do you hear?--OLD HAG shall never marry me.' Once more this audacious and unmanly lover, who respected nothing, seized her by the waist and kissed her lips. Once more Lady Carlyon felt that unaccountable weakness steal upon her, so that she was bewildered, faint, and humiliated. For a moment she lay still and acquiescent in his arms. Worse than all, the door opened and Professor Ingleby surprised her in this compromising situation. 'Upon my word!' she said, with a smile upon her lips; 'upon my word, my lord--Constance--if her Grace of Dunstanburgh knew this! Children, children!'--she laid her withered hand upon Constance's head--'I pray that this thing may be. But we want time. Let us keep Lord Chester's appointment. And, as far as you can, leave to me, my lord, your old tutor, the task of speech. I know the Duchess, and I know the Chancellor. It may be that the oil of persuasion will be more efficacious than the lash of contradiction. Let me try.' They stood confused--even the unblushing front of the lover reddened. 'I have thought of a way of getting time. Come with us, Constance, as Lord Chester's nearest female relation; I as his tutor, in absence of Lady Boltons, who is ill. When the Chancellor proposes the Duchess, do you propose--yourself. She will decide against you on the spot. _Appeal to the House_; that will give us three months' delay.' CHAPTER III THE CHANCELLOR The Chancellor, a lady now advanced in years, was of humble origin--a fact to which she often alluded to at public meetings with a curious mixture of humility and pride: the former, because it did really humiliate her in a country where so much deference was paid to hereditary rank, to reflect that she could not be proud of her ancestors; the latter, because her position was really so splendid, and her enemies could not but acknowledge it. She had plenty of enemies--as was, of course, the case with every successful woman in every line of life--and these were unanimous in declaring that she proclaimed her humble origin only because, if she attempted to conceal it, other people would proclaim it for her. And, indeed, without attributing extraordinary malice to these ladies, the Chancellor's unsuccessful rivals and enemies, this statement was probably true--nothing being more common, during an animated debate, than for the ladies to hurl at each other's heads all such facts procurable as might be calculated to damage the reputation of a family: and this so much so, that after a lively night the family trees were as much scotched, broken, and lopped as a public pleasure-garden in the nineteenth century after the first Monday in August.