Lady Nina Spencer sat in the drawing-room of the big house in Carlton House Terrace, awaiting the few guests who had been invited to a small, informal dinner-party. Her father, very infirm for his years, sat opposite to her in a big easy-chair. The Earl spoke in his low, quavering voice: "I have nothing to say against the woman herself, judging from what little we have seen of her. She has very perfect manners, just a trifle too perfect. I can quite understand that for the average man she possesses considerable charm, and she has great good looks. Many people would call her beautiful. But I can only repeat what I said on the day I received Guy's letter announcing his clandestine marriage: `The pity of it.'" Lady Nina was a quiet, robust and practical young person, fond of looking facts in the face, and looking at them very squarely. She had been as much shocked at her cousin's rash marriage as the Earl himself, but it was an accomplished fact. Only two courses were open: the first to have nothing more to do with Guy and his wife, the second to admit the wife to a guarded intimacy. Lord Southleigh had declared warmly, in his first disgust, that he would never look upon his young kinsman's face again. But Nina had prevailed with milder counsels. Guy was his heir, and in the course of Nature would succeed to the family honours. They would not cut themselves adrift from him, and they must make up their minds to tolerate this wife, of whose antecedents he could give no satisfactory account. The one fact he did mention, that she was a cousin of Mrs L'Estrange, did not weigh much with them. Mrs L'Estrange came of a fairly good family, so far as birth counted, but it was both impecunious and addicted to making unfortunate alliances. One of her sisters had run away with a good-looking young fellow who had been her father's valet. She was a woman who would have a good many undesirable relatives knocking about. Miss Stella Keane, the daughter of an impoverished Irishman, might well belong to this band of undesirables. More especially as Guy's statements about her antecedents were of the most bald and unsatisfactory nature. It was all very sad and regrettable from every point of view, but, as Nina calmly pointed out, several young heirs to peerages had been running amok lately, in the matrimonial sense, and taking their wives from very questionable quarters. Guy might have married some coarse and common creature from the music-halls. It was unfortunate, in a way, that he had a considerable fortune of his own, and could snap his fingers at the displeasure of his relatives, if they presumed to show it. But, somehow, knowing Guy as well as she did, Nina did not believe that the future Countess of Southleigh, who would, in due course, wear the family jewels, was likely to be coarse or common. Guy was too fastidious, too innately a gentleman, to be snared by a creature of that kind.