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cousin Rachel wishes to become a mere wife!'
       'Gammon!' said her ladyship crudely. 'Show me the female who doesn't hope for marriage, and I'll show you a lunatic past praying for! Yes, and if you wish to know what I think – not that I suppose you do! – you're a shuttlehead not to have married Hetta when I daresay she was yours for the asking!'
       The Viscount was annoyed, and betrayed it by a slight contraction of his brows, and the careful civility with which he said: 'You are mistaken, my dear aunt: Hetta was never mine for the asking. Neither of us has ever wished for a closer rela tionship than that of the friendship we have always enjoyed – and, I trust, may always enjoy!'
       As little as Lady Emborough resented the quiet checks her husband imposed upon her exuberance did she resent a deserved snub. She replied, laughing: 'That's the hammer! Quite right to give me a set-down, for what you do is no business of mine! Emborough is for ever scolding me for being too wide in the mouth! But, wit-cracking apart, Desford, isn't it time you were thinking of matrimony? I don't mean Hetta, for if you don't fancy each other there's nothing to be said about that, but with Horace still in France, and Simon, from all I hear, sowing even more wild oats than your father did, in his day, I can't but feel that you do owe it to your father to give him a grandson or two – legitimate ones, I mean!'
       This made the Viscount burst out laughing, and effectually banished his vexation. 'Aunt Sophronia,' he said, 'you are quite abominable! Did anyone ever tell you so? But you are right, for all that, as I've lately been brought to realize. It is clearly time that I brought my delightfully untrammelled life to an end. The only difficulty is that I have yet to meet any female who will both meet with Papa's approval, and inspire me with the smallest desire to become riveted to her for life!'
       'You are a great deal too nice in your requirements,' she told him severely; but added, after a moment's reflection: 'Not but what I don't wish any of my children to marry anyone for whom they don't feel a decided preference. When I was a girl, you know, most of us married to oblige our parents. Why, even my bosom-bow in those days did so, though she positively disliked the man to whom her parents betrothed her! And a vilely unhappy marriage it was! But your grandfather, my dear Ashley, having himself been forced to contract an affiance which was far from happy, was resolute in his deter mination that none of his children should find themselves in a similar situation. And nothing, you will agree, could have been more felicitous than the result of his liberality of mind! To be sure, there were only three of us, and your Aunt Jane died before you were born, but when I married Emborough, and Everard married your dear mama, no one could have been more delighted than your grandfather!'
       'I am sorry he died before I was out of short coats,' Desford remarked. 'I have no memory of him, but from all I have heard about him from you, and from Mama, I wish that I had had the privilege of knowing him.'
       'Yes, you'd have liked him,' she nodded. 'What's more, he'd have liked you! And if your father hadn't waited until he was more than thirty before he got married to your mama you woul d have known him! And why Wroxton should glump at you for doing exactly what he did himself is something I don't understand, or wish to understand! There, you be off to play billiards with your cousins, and the Montsale girl, before I get to be as cross as crabs, which they say I always do when I talk about your father!'
       He was very ready to obey her, and she did not again revert to the subject. He stayed for a week in Hampshire, and passed his time very pleasurably. After the exigencies of the Season, with its ceaseless breakfasts, balls, routs, race-parties at Ascot, opera-parties, convivial gatherings at Cribb's Parlour, evenings spent at