CHAPTER III.

'Lorsqu'un homme s'ennuie et qu'il sent qu'il est las
De traîner le boulet au bagne d'ici bas,

Dès qu'il se fait sauter, qu'importe la manière ?'

ELIZABETH'S manner that evening was just a little colder and quieter than usual. No unwonted flutter of her spirits betrayed the fact that the current of her life had been suddenly turned into a new channel. She had suffered her lover to accompany her to the edge of that suburb in which the Boroughbridge-road was situated, and had there dismissed. him.

I may come to see you to-morrow, mayn't I?' he pleaded. He had been trying to make her fix an early date for their marriage all the way along the dusky lane.

'We must be married and have our weddingtour over before the Derby, you know,' he said persuasively. You don't care much about the touring business, do you? I'm sure I don't. I never could understand why newly-married people should

be sent to stare at mountains, and do penance in musty old cathedrals, as if they'd done something wicked, and were obliged to work it out somehow before they could get absolution. A week at Malvern would be about our figure; or if we had tolerable weather, I could take you as far as Malta in the Pixy.'

'You are in a great hurry to settle matters; but when I promised to marry you, just now, I said nothing about the date of our marriage.'

But that goes without saying. I've served my apprenticeship. You're not going to turn round upon me like Laban, and offer me one of your sisters, or make me work seven years longer. And if you have made up your mind to marry me, it can't matter to you whether it's soon or late.'

'What will Lady Paulyn say?' asked Elizabeth, with a little laugh. There was something pleasant in the idea of that wily matron's mortification.

'My mother will be rabid,' said the dutiful son; 'but so she would whomsoever I married, unless it was for bullion. It was a good joke her coming to try and choke you off with that story about Sarah Ramsay. Yes; my mother will be riled.'

'And Miss Disney? do you think she will be pleased ?'

The Viscount was not so prompt in his answer this time.

‘Hilda,' he said meditatively; 'well, I don't know. But I suppose she'll be rather glad. It'll give her a home, you see, by and by, when my mother goes off the hooks. She couldn't have lived with me if I'd been single.'

'Of course not. We shall have Miss Disney to live with us, then, by and by ?'

In the natural course of events, yes; my mother can't go on nursing the Ashcombe estate till the Day of Judgment, though I've no doubt she'd like very much to do it. And when she's dead, and all that kind of thing,' continued his lordship pleasantly, Hilda can have an attic and a knife and fork with us, unless she marries in the interim, and I don't think that's likely.'

'She looks rather like a person who has had what people call "a disappointment,' a disappointment," suggested Elizabeth, wincing a little as she remembered her own disappointment.

She came into the world with a disappointment,' replied Lord Paulyn. Her mother eat the sour grapes, and her teeth were set on edge. Her father, Colonel Disney, was heir- presumptive to a great estate, when my aunt Sybilla married him; but

when his uncle died, six months after the Colonel's marriage, a claimant sprang up with a rigmarole story of a Scotch marriage, and no end of documentary evidence, the upshot of which was, that after a good deal of Scotch law, and pursuing and defending and so on, the claimant-a black-muzzled lad with a dip of the tar-brush-walked over the course, and Hilda's father was left with a large fortune in the hands of the Jews, in the shape of post-obits and accommodation-bills. He ran away with a French opera-dancer soon afterwards, in a fit of disgust with society. My aunt and Hilda were left to drag on scmehow upon a pittance which my grandfather, a stingy old beggar, had settled upon his daughter when she married. When my aunt died, Hilda came to live with my mother, and has had a very pleasant time of it ever since, I make no doubt.'

They parted at the beginning of the villas that were dotted along the first half mile or so of the Boroughbridge-road, giving a trim suburban aspect to this side of Hawleigh. There were even gas-lamps, macadam, and a general aspect of inhabitedness very different from the narrow lanes and rugged common on the other side of the town. This new neighbourhood was the west-end of Hawleigh.

'I shall come to see you to-morrow,' repeated

Lord Paulyn, reluctant to depart.

And mind,

everything must be over and done with before May. Do you remember the first Derby we were at together, nearly two years ago? Jolly, wasn't it? I've got a new team for the drag, spankers. I've set my heart upon your seeing Young Englander win. Hadn't you better write to Mrs. Chevenix? She's the woman to do our business. If you trust everything to your sisters, they'll be a twelvemonth muddling about it.'

We have plenty of time for discussing these arrangements, without standing in the high-road to do so,' said Elizabeth impatiently. If I had known you were going to worry me, I should never have said what I did just now. After all, it was only said on the impulse of the moment. I may change my mind to-morrow morning.'

'O no, you won't. I won't stand anything of that kind. I am not like that parson fellow. Once having got you, I mean to keep you. I think I deserve some reward for holding on as I've done. You mustn't talk any more about throwing me over; that's past and done with.'

'Then you mustn't worry me,' said Elizabeth, with a faint sigh of utter weariness.

So now good

night for the last time. It is past seven o'clock,