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glued the Bassenthwaites’ pew that time everyone was in such a pucker.”
    “Well, no, I didn’t,” admitted Hero. “But it was you who did the glueing really, Sherry.”
    “If that isn’t a female all over!” exclaimed Sherry. “Next you’ll say you had nothing to do with it!”
    Miss Wantage tucked a small, confiding hand into his arm. “I did help, didn’t I, Anthony?”
    “Yes, and spilled the glue over my new smalls because you thought you heard someone coming, silly chit!” said the Viscount, recalling this incident with a darkling look in his eye.
    Miss Wantage gave a little chuckle. “Oh, how you did slap my cheek! It was red for hours and hours, and I had to make up such a tale to account for it!”
    “No, did I really?” said the Viscount, rather conscience-stricken, and giving the cheek a friendly rub. “What a deuced young brute I was! Not but what you’d have tried the patience of a saint, brat, often and often!”
    “Yes, that is what my cousins say, and I can’t but feel that I should try the curate’s patience even more, Sherry, because I do seem always to be getting into a scrape, though indeed I don’t mean to. At least, not every time.”
    “Don’t keep on harping on the curate!” ordered the Viscount. “The whole idea of your marrying him is the greatest piece of nonsense I ever heard! In fact, it’s a very good thing I chanced to come down here, for the lord knows what silly trick you’d have tried to play off if I hadn’t caught you in time!”
    “No, and I am so glad to see you again, Anthony,” she replied. “I thought perhaps you would come.”
    “Good God, did you? Why?”
    “To wait on Isabella,” she replied innocently.
    “Ha!” uttered his lordship, with a harsh and bitter laugh.
    Miss Wantage looked wonderingly up at him. “You don’t sound very pleased, Sherry. Would she not see you?”
    “Pleased!” ejaculated his lordship. “Much I have to be pleased about!”
    “I know she wouldn’t receive any of the other gentlemen, though they came all the way from London for the purpose, but I did think she would see you.”
    “Well, she did,” said the Viscount shortly. “And for all the good I got by it, I might as well have stayed—Here, who told you I wanted to marry Bella?”
    “You did,” answered Miss Wantage simply. “It was when you came down last year. Don’t you remember?”
    “No, I can’t say that I do, but it don’t signify. She won’t have me.”
    “Sherry!” cried Miss Wantage, quite shocked. “You don’t mean that you have offered, and she has refused you?”
    “Yes, I do. And that’s not all!” said the Viscount, his wrongs rising forcibly to his mind. “She said my character was unsteady, and I’d no delicacy of principle! That, from a girl I’ve known all my life!”
    “It isn’t true!” Hero said, warmly clasping his hand.
    “I’m a gamester, and a libertine, and she don’t like the company I keep. I’m—”
    “Sherry,” interrupted Hero anxiously, “can she have heard about your opera dancer, do you think?”
    “Well, upon my word!” gasped the Viscount. “What the devil do you know about my opera dancer? And don’t say I told you, because that I never did!”
    “No, no, Edwin told me! That is, he told Cassy, because they had a quarrel, and it was really she who told me.”
    “You’ve no business to be talking of such things!” said his lordship sternly. He thought it over, his brow creasing. “Besides, it don’t make sense! Edwin told Cassy, because they had a quarrel? Where’s the sense in that?”
    “Why, Sherry, because he said that before she set her cap at you, she might as well know—” Miss Wantage broke off, flushing deeply. “Oh, I wish I didn’t say things I ought not to!” she said, much mortified. “Truly, I didn’t mean to be such a cat!”
    “Oh!” said his lordship. “So that’s what’s in the wind, is it? As a matter of fact, I knew it,” he added, momentarily