The Marquis shook out his handkerchief, wiped his lips and lit a cigarette. "Yours appears to be rather a dismal errand, Mr. Wadham," he said coldly. "Is there any reason why I should detain you further?" "None whatever, so long as I have made it quite clear that there is no prospect of raising a single half-penny in excess of the mortgages already completed. The matter of the forty thousand pounds draft is, of course, entirely in your lordship's hands. I thought it my duty to inform you as to the value of the shares, in case you were able to persuade the gentleman who sold them to you to cancel the transaction." "You mean well, Wadham, no doubt," the Marquis declared, a little patronisingly, "but, as I said before, your turn of mind is too legal. My respects to your father. You will forgive my ringing, will you not? Lady Letitia is waiting for me to walk with her." Mr. Wadham departed, saying blasphemous things all the way into Piccadilly, and the Marquis walked with Lady Letitia in the Park. As a rule their conversation, although mostly of personal matters, was conducted in light-hearted fashion enough by Letitia, and responded to with a certain dry though stately humour by her father. This morning, however, a silence which amounted almost to constraint reigned between them. The Marquis, realising this, finally dragged his thoughts with difficulty away from his own affairs. "I had intended to speak to you, Letitia," he began, "concerning the announcement of your marriage. Some festivities must naturally follow, and a meeting between myself and the Duke." "Whom you hate like poison, don't you, dad!" Letitia said, with a little grimace. "Well, so do I, for the matter of that." "One's personal feelings are scarcely of account in such a case," the Marquis averred; "that is to say, any personal feelings with the exception of yours and Grantham's. The match is suitable in every way, and at a time when every young man of account is being chased by a new race of ineligible young women, it must be a comfort to his family to contemplate an alliance like this." Letitia shrugged her shoulders. "With regard to the actual announcement, dad," she said, "we are going to keep it to ourselves for a few weeks longer, or at any rate until we are safely settled in the country. It's such a bore to have every one you have ever spoken to in your life come rushing round to wish you happiness and that sort of thing. Charlie rather agrees with me." "The matter, naturally, is in your hands," the Marquis replied, with a slight air of relief. "Of course, I am seeing rather more of Charlie," Letitia went on, "but people won't take any notice of that. There have been rumours of our engagement at least half a dozen times already. Aren't you getting just a little sick, dad, of this everlasting walk and these everlasting people we keep on bowing to and wish we didn't know?"