"Yes," she said at length, but without looking at me. "You've done marvellously well." "In the only language one can love in," I said bitterly. The words had no apparent effect. She still stared at her twinkling feet. Suddenly she lifted her eyes up to mine and said, almost sharply, "Then what did happen to you between the Hanyards and Leek to change you?" It was clean, swift hitting, and made me gasp, but I managed to escape. "Madam," said I, "I set out with you from the Hanyards to serve you and for no other purpose whatsoever. In my opinion, speaking in all modesty, I served you as well after Leek as before it. At least, I tried to." She leaped up, and, with great sweeps of her arm, flung the cushions into the library. She said briefly, "And you succeeded, sir!" Then she left me. swiftly and passionately, without another word or look. After this, the gap between us became obvious. Meanwhile the Marquess of Tiverton was doing his best to give me a competent knowledge of the Court-end of the town. He had a spacious mansion in Bloomsbury Square, but this was now let to a great nabob, and he himself lived in close-shorn splendour in a small house in St. James's. Here I saw much of him, for commonly I would stroll round late in the forenoon and rout him out of bed. By an odd turn we took to each other greatly, and while he drank chocolate in bed or trifled with his breakfast we had many talks on the few subjects that mattered to him. Our favourite theme was Margaret, whom he outspokenly worshipped. He rhapsodized over her in great stretches, calling me to testify with him to her divineness, and rating me soundly if, in the bitterness of my heart, I was a little laggard in my devotions. And, at irregular intervals, like Selah in the Psalms, he would intone dolefully, "And I can't marry her!" It was no use my protesting that an unmarried man could marry any woman he liked if she would have him. "A man can," he would reply, "but a bankrupt marquess can't. I've got to marry that jade. Pah! She's as lank as a hop-pole and as yellow as a guinea. But what's a marquess to do, Noll? They say she could tie up the neck and armholes of her shift and fill it with diamonds. Damn her! I wish Brocton would snap her up, but he can't. He'll never be more than an earl and I'm a marquess. Curse my luck! Fancy me a marquess! I'm a disgrace to my order and as poor as a crow." The 'jade' referred to was the nabob's only daughter and heiress, who was, as all the town knew, to make a great match. My Lord Brocton was keenly in pursuit of her, but she inclined to the Marquess, who could have had her and her vast fortune any day for the asking. She was certainly not overdone with charms, but Tiverton in his anger had made her out worse than she was.