"A promising one, too: twenty thousand a year, a wife already picked out for you--high-born and beautiful, of course. Even Lady Lancaster couldn't have the impertinence to select any other for Lord Lancaster." "Oh, by the bye," Lancaster said, with sudden eagerness. "Well?" "Do me this favor: don't rehearse any of my family history to Miss West--the barren title, the picked-out bride, and--the rest of it." "Certainly not. But of course she will know once she gets to England." "At least she need not know sooner," Lancaster replied. "No," assented De Vere; and then he asked thoughtfully. "Is it true that her aunt is the housekeeper at Lancaster Park?" "That is what my aunt says in her letter." "And yet she--my little beauty--does not look lowly born." "No; her mother was an American, you know. They--the Americans--all claim to be nobly born, I believe. They recognize no such caste distinctions as we do. Miss West bears a patent of nobility in her face," said Lancaster, kindly. "Does she not, the little darling? What a sweet good nature beams in her little face. And, after all, it is our own poet laureate who says: "'Howe'er it be, it seems to me, 'Tis only noble to be good: Kind hearts are more than coronets, And simple faith than Norman blood.'" "Yet I think you will find it hard to bring the rest of the De Veres to subscribe to Tennyson's verse," Lancaster said, anxiously. "They will e'en have to. I shall please myself, if I can--mark that, lad. So you needn't scold any more, old fellow, for I am in dead earnest to make Leonora Mrs. H. De Vere," laughed the young soldier. "You are the arbiter of your own destiny. Enviable fellow!" grumbled Lancaster. "I never knew what a lucky fellow I was until now," agreed De Vere. "It was fortunate for me that I had a bachelor uncle in trade, and he left me his fortune when he died. I can snap my fingers at my family if they cut up about my choice." "Yes," Lancaster said, dryly. "Ah, you are just thinking to yourself what a dude I am!" exclaimed De Vere, suddenly. "Here I am talking so confidentially about my choice, when I do not even know if she will look at me. What do you think about it, eh? Do I stand any chance with her?" "If she were a society girl, I should say that you stood no chance of being refused. No girl who had been properly educated by Madame Fashion would say no to ten thousand a year and a title in prospective," Lancaster replied, with conviction. "You are putting my personal attractions quite out of the question," said De Vere, chagrined. "Because they are quite secondary to your more solid recommendations," sarcastically. "And, after all, you have not said what you think about my chances with Miss West." "I do not know what to say, because I do not at all understand her. Yet if she is poor, as of course she must be, and being lowly born, as we know, she could not do better than take you, if she is worldly wise."