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either, so, if you please, Dy, will you be so obliging as to—"
    "No, dash it, Nell!" interrupted the Viscount hastily. "Not to a masquerade out at Chiswick! Ask Marlow, or Westbury, or another of your flirts! The lord knows you've plenty of 'em! Why choose me?"
    "She is afraid they wouldn't keep the line," said Letty demurely.
    Before the Viscount could reply Mr. Fancot rather unexpectedly entered into the discussion. "Shouldn't wonder at it if she was right," he said. "Masquerades, you know! Ramshackle! Ought to go with her la'ship!"
    "What the deuce do you know about masquerades, Corny?" demanded Dysart. "You never went to one in your life!"
    "Yes, I did," asserted Mr. Fancot. "I went with you, Dy! Well, I wouldn't let my sister go to one alone. What I mean is, I wouldn't if I had one. Had a sister, I mean," he added, becoming a little flustered, as Letty giggled.
    "Covent Garden!" exclaimed Dysart scornfully. "I should think not indeed! But this affair will be quite another thing. Pretty insipid, I should think. Why do you go to it?"
    "You see, it is the first masquerade Letty has attended, and so she wishes particularly to go," Nell explained.
    "Yes, and, what is more, I am quite determined to go," corroborated Letty. "I collect you don't mean to be so obliging as to escort us, which doesn't surprise me above a very little, because of all imaginable persons I think brothers to be by far the most disagreeable!"
    "Letty, that is not just!" exclaimed Nell. "You have no cause to say so, and I assure you I have none either!" She smiled lovingly up at the Viscount. "Don't come, if you had rather not! At my cousin's party I can't need an escort, after all."
    However, the Viscount, either from perversity, or from a sense of obligation, said, with a darkling look at Letty, that if his sister was set on attending the masquerade he would certainly accompany her. He added, with an austerity which accorded ill with his rakish appearance, that if it suited Cardross's notions of propriety to allow Nell to go alone to such parties that was where he must join issue with his lordship. He then, most unhandsomely, rode off before either lady could counter this charge. Nell was merely distressed that he should think her husband neglectful, but Letty, who reserved to herself the right to criticize Cardross, was extremely incensed, and charged Mr. Fancot, lingering to make his adieux in form, with a rude message to him.
    "Though, to be sure, I don't know why I should put myself to the trouble of fighting Giles's battles " she observed, as Mr. Fancot left them, and Nell told her coachman to drive on. "I am persuaded he would never fight mine!"
    She encountered a very direct look from Nell's soft blue eyes. Nell said quietly: "You must not say so. It is quite untrue, and you know it!"
    Letty sighed. "Well, I didn't mean precisely that, but you must own that no one was ever more unsympathetic than Giles. It is so unkind of him to take poor Jeremy in aversion! I had not believed he could be so proud, or care so much for consequence, or so little for my happiness!"
    "It isn't that! Indeed, it is not, Letty! He doesn't dislike Mr. Allandale, and as for caring about his consequence you know he has said that if you are still of the same mind in a—in a year or two, he will not then refuse his consent. It is your happiness which he thinks of. I don't say that he likes the match, for although Mr. Allandale's situation in life is respectable, he is not your equal in station and there is a disparity between your fortunes which makes the marriage even more ineligible."
    "That is just what I have no patience with!" Letty said quickly. "If I were poor too it would be another matter! I don't mean to say that I shouldn't wish to marry Jeremy, for I should; but there would then be justice in Cardross's objection! It is a melancholy reflection, Nell, but I fear I shouldn't be a very good wife for a man in straitened circumstances. Of course I should endeavour