That evening before joining her guests at the usual eight o'clock
repast, Maryllia told Cicely Bourne of the disagreeable 'surprise'
which had been treacherously contrived for her at Sir Morton
Pippitt's tea-party by the unexpected presence of the loathed wooer
whom she sought to avoid.
"Margaret Bludlip Courtenay must certainly have known he was to be
there,"--she said--"And I think, from her look, Eva Beaulyon knew
also. But neither of them gave me a hint. And now if I were to say
anything they would only laugh and declare that they 'thought it
would be fun.' There's no getting any help or sympathy out of such
people. I'm sorry!--but--as usual--I must stand alone."
"I daresay every one of them was in the plot--men and all, if the
truth were told!"--burst out Cicely, indignantly--"And Mrs. Fred is
at the bottom of the mischief. It's a shame! Your aunt is a brute,
Maryllia! I would say so to her face if she were here! She's a
calculating, selfish, title-grubbing brute! There! What are you
going to do?"
"Nothing!"--and Maryllia looked thoughtfully out of the window at
the flaming after-glow of the sunset, bathing all the landscape in a
flood of coppery crimson--"I shall just go on as usual. When I go
down to dinner presently, I shall not speak of to-day's incident at
all. Eva Beaulyon and Margaret Courtenay will expect me to speak of
it--and they will be disappointed. If they allude to it, I shall
change the subject. And I shall invite Roxmouth and his tame pussy,
Mr. Marius Longford, to dinner next week, as guests of Sir Morton
Pippitt,--that's all."
Cicely opened her big dark eyes.
"You will actually invite Roxmouth?"
"Of course I will--of course I MUST. I want everyone here to see and
understand how absolutely indifferent I am to him."
"They will never see--they will NEVER understand!" said Cicely,
shaking her mop of wild hair decisively--"My dear Maryllia, the
colder you are to 'ce cher Roxmouth' the more the world will talk!
They will say you are merely acting a part. "No woman in her senses,
they will swear, would discourage the attentions of a prospective
Duke."
"They may say what they like,--they may report me OUT of my senses
if they choose!" declared Maryllia, hotly--"I am not a citizeness of
the great American Republic that I should sell myself for a title! I
have suffered quite enough at the hands of this society sneak,
Roxmouth--and I don't intend to suffer any more. His methods are
intolerable. There is not a city on the Continent where he has not
paid the press to put paragraphs announcing my engagement to him--
and he has done the same thing with every payable paper in London.
Aunt Emily has assisted him in this,--she has even written some of
the announcements herself, sending them to the papers with my
portrait and his, for publication! And because this constantly
rumoured and expected marriage does not come off, and because people
ask WHY it doesn't come off, the pair of conspirators are reduced to
telling lies about me! I almost wish I could get small-pox or some
other hideous ailment and become disfigured,--THEN Roxmouth might
leave me alone! Perhaps Providence will arrange it in that way."
Cicely uttered an exclamation of horror.
"Oh, don't say such a thing, Maryllia! It's too dreadful! You are
the prettiest, sweetest creature I ever saw, and I wouldn't have a
scar or a blemish on your dear face for a million Roxmouths! Have
patience! We'll get rid of him!"
Maryllia gave a hopeless gesture.
"How?"
"Well, I don't quite know!" and Cicely knitted her black brows
perplexedly--"But don't worry, Maryllia! I believe it will all come
right. Something will happen to make short work of him,--I'm sure of
it!"
"You are an optimist,"--said Maryllia, kissing her--"and you're very
young! I have learned that in this best of all possible worlds,
human nature is often the worst part of all creation, and that when
you want to avoid a particularly objectionable human being, that
being is always round the corner. However, if I cannot get rid of
Roxmouth, I shall do something desperate! I shall disappear!"
"Where to?" asked Cicely, startled.
"I don't know. Nowhere that you cannot find me!"
She laughed,--she had recovered her natural buoyancy and light-
heartedness, and when she joined her party at dinner that evening,
she showed no traces of annoyance or fatigue. She made no allusion
to Lord Roxmouth's appearance at Sir Morton Pippitt's, and Mrs.
Bludlip Courtenay, glancing at her somewhat timorously, judged it
best to avoid the subject. For she knew she had played a mean trick
on the friend whose guest she was,--she knew she had in her pocket a
private letter from Mrs. Fred Vancourt, telling her of Lord
Roxmouth's arrival at Badsworth Hall, and urging her to persuade
Maryllia to go there, and to bring about meetings between the two as
frequently as possible,--and as she now and then met the straight
flash of her hostess's honest blue eyes, she felt the hot colour
rising to her face underneath all her rouge, and for once in her
placid daily life of body-massage and self-admiration, she felt
discomposed and embarrassed. The men talked the incident of the day
over among themselves when they were left to their coffee and
cigars, and discussed the probabilities and non-probabilities of
Miss Vancourt becoming the Duchess of Ormistoune, with considerable
zest.
"She'll never have him--she hates him like poison!"--declared Lord
Charlemont.
"Not surprised at that,"--said another man--"if she knows anything
about him!"
"He has gone the pace!" murmured Mr. Bludlip Courtenay thoughtfully,
dropping his monocle out of his eye and hastily putting it back, as
though he feared his eye itself might escape from its socket unless
thus fenced in--"But then, after all--wild oats! Once sown and
reaped, they seldom spring again after marriage."
"I think you're wrong there!" said Charlemont--"Wild oats are a
singularly perpetual crop. In many cases marriage seems to give them
a fresh start."
"Will there be a good harvest when YOU marry, Charly?" asked one of
the company, with a laugh.
"Oh, I shouldn't wonder!" he returned, good-naturedly--"I'm just as
big a fool as any other man. But I always do my best not to play
down on a woman."
"Woman"--said Mr. Bludlip Courtenay, sententiously--"is a riddle.
Sometimes she wants a vote in elections,--then, if it's offered to
her, she won't have it. Buy her a pearl, and she says she would
rather have had a ruby. Give her a park phaeton, and she declares
she has been dying for a closed brougham. Offer her a five-hundred-
guinea pair of cobs, and she will burst into tears and say she would
have liked a 'little pug-dog--a dear, darling, little Japanese pug-
dog'--she has no use for cobs. And to carry the simile further, give
her a husband, and she straightway wants a lover."
"That implies that a husband ceases to be a lover,"--said
Charlemont.
"Well, I guess a husband can't be doing Romeo and 'oh moon'-ing till
he's senile," observed a cadaverous looking man, opposite, who
originally hailed from the States, but who, having purchased an
estate in England, now patriotically sought to forget that he was
ever an American.
They laughed.
"'Oh moon'-ing is a good expression,"--said Lord Charlemont--"very
good!"
"It's mine, sir--but you're welcome to it,"--rejoined the Anglicised
renegade of the Stars and Stripes,--"To 'oh moon' is a verb every
woman likes to have conjugated by a male fool once at least in her
life."
"Yes--and if you don't 'oh m-moon' with her,"--lisped a young fellow
at the other end of the table--"She considers you a b-b-brute!"
Again the laugh went round.
"Well, I don't think Roxmouth will have a chance to go 'oh moon'-ing
with our hostess,"--said Charlemont--"The whole idea of her marriage
with him has been faked up by Mrs. Fred. The girl herself,--Miss
Vancourt,--doesn't want him, and won't have him."
"Will you take a bet on it?" asked Mr. Bludlip Courtenay.
"Yes, if you like!" and Charlemont laughed--"I don't bet much, but
I'll bet anything you choose to name on that. Maryllia Vancourt will
never, unless she is bound, gagged and drugged into it, become
Duchess of Ormistoune."
"Shall we say a tenner?" suggested Courtenay, writing the bet down
in his notebook.
"Certainly."
"Good! I take the other side. I know something of Roxmouth,--he's
seldom baffled. Miss Vancourt will be the Duchess before next year!"
"Not a bit of it! Next year Miss Vancourt will still be Miss
Vancourt!" said Charlemont. emphatically--"She's a woman of
character, and if she doesn't intend to marry Roxmouth, nothing will
make her. She's got a mind of her own,--most women's minds are the
minds of their favourite men."
"He-he-te-he--te-he--he!" giggled the young man who had before
spoken,--"I know a girl---"
"Shut up, old chappie! You 'know a bank whereon the wild thyme
grows'--that's what YOU know!" said Charlemont. "Come and have a
look at the motor."
Whereupon they rose from the table and dispersed.
From that day, however, a certain additional interest was given to
the house-party entertainment at Abbot's Manor. Mrs. Bludlip
Courtenay and Lady Beaulyon fell so neatly into the web which
Maryllia carefully prepared for them, that she soon found out what a
watch they kept upon her, and knew, without further trouble, that
she must from henceforth regard them as spies in her aunt and Lord
Roxmouth's service. The men took no part in this detective business,
but nevertheless were keenly inquisitive in their own line, more
bets being given and taken freely on what was likely to be the
upshot of affairs. Meanwhile, Lord Roxmouth and Mr. Longford,
sometimes accompanied by Sir Morton Pippitt, and sometimes without
him, called often, but Maryllia was always out. She had two watch-
dogs besides her canine friend, Plato,--and these were Cicely and
Julian Adderley. Cicely had pressed the 'moon calf' into her
service, and had told him just as much as she thought proper
concerning Roxmouth and his persecution of her friend and patroness.
"Go as often as you can to Badsworth Hall,"--she commanded him--"and
find out all their movements there. Then tell ME,--and whenever
Roxmouth comes here to call, Maryllia will be out! Be vigilant and
faithful!"
And she had shaken her finger at him and rolled her dark eyes with
such tragic intensity, that he had entered zealously into the spirit
of the little social drama, and had become as it were special
reporter of the Roxmouth policy to the opposing party.
But this was behind the scenes. The visible action of the piece
appeared just now to be entirely with Maryllia and her lordly
wooer,--she as heroine, he as hero,--while the 'supers,' useful in
their way as spies, messengers and general attendants, took their
parts in the various scenes with considerable vivacity, wondering
how much they might possibly get out of it for themselves. If, while
they were guests at Abbot's Manor, an engagement between Lord
Roxmouth and Maryllia Vancourt could be finally settled, they felt
they could all claim a share in having urged the matter on, and
'worked' it. And it was likely that in such a case, Mrs. Fred
Vancourt, with millions at her disposal, would be helpful to them in
their turn, should they ever desire it. Altogether, it seemed a game
worth playing. None of them felt any regret that Maryllia should be
made the pivot round which to work their own schemes of self-
aggrandisement. Besides, no worldly wise society man or woman could
be expected to feel sorry for assisting a young woman to attain the
position of a Duchess. Such an idea would be too manifestly absurd.
"It will soon be over now,"--said Cicely, consolingly, one afternoon
in the last week of Maryllia's entertaining--"And oh, how glad we
shall be when everybody has gone!"
"There's one person who won't go, I'm afraid!" said Maryllia.
"Roxmouth? Well, even HE can't stay at Badsworth Hall for ever!"
"No,--but he can stay as long as he likes,--long enough to work
mischief. Sir Morton Pippitt won't send him away,--we may be sure of
that!"
"If HE doesn't go, I suppose WE must?" queried Cicely tentatively.
Maryllia's eyes grew sad and wistful.
"I'm afraid so--I don't know--we shall see!"--she replied slowly--
"Something will have to be settled one way or another--pleasantly or
unpleasantly."
Cicely's black brows almost met across her nose in a meditative
frown.
"What a shame it is that you can't be left in peace, Maryllia!"--she
exclaimed--"And all because of your aunt's horrible money! Why
doesn't Roxmouth marry Mrs. Fred?"
"I wish he would!" said Maryllia, heartily, and then she began to
laugh. "Then it would be a case of 'Oh my prophetic soul! mine
uncle!' And I should be able to say: 'My aunt is a Duchess.' Imagine
the pride and glory of it!"
Cicely joined in her laughter.
"It WOULD be funny!" she said--"But whatever happens, I do hope
Roxmouth isn't going to drive us away from the Manor this summer.
You won't let him, will you?"
Maryllia hesitated a moment.
"It will depend on circumstances," she said, at last--"If he
persists in staying at Badsworth, I must leave the neighbourhood.
There's no help for it. It would only be for a short time, of
course--and it seems hard, when I have only just come home, as it
were,--but there,--never mind, Cicely! We'll treat it as a game of
hare and hounds,--and we'll baffle the hounds somehow!"
Cicely gave a comic gesture of resignation to the inevitable.
"Anyhow, if we want a man to help us,"--she said,--"There's Gigue.
Fortunately he's here now."
Gigue WAS there--very certainly there, and all there. Louis Gigue,
renowned throughout the world for his culture of the human voice
divine, had arrived the previous day direct from Paris, and had
exploded into the Manor as though he were a human bombshell. He had
entered at the hour of afternoon tea, wild-eyed, wild-haired,
travel-soiled, untidy and eminently good-natured, and had taken
everybody by surprise. He had rushed up to Maryllia, and seizing her
hand had kissed it rapturously,--he had caught Cicely in his arms
and embraced her enthusiastically with a 'Mon enfant prodigue!' and,
tossing his grizzled locks from off his broad forehead, he had
seated himself, sans ceremonie, amidst the company, as though he had
known everyone present all his life.
"Mon Dieu, ze mal der mer!" he had exclaimed--"Ze bouleversement of
ze vagues! Ze choses terribles! Ze femmes sick!--zen men of ze
coleur blieu! Ah, quel ravissement to be in ze land!"
Gigue's English was his own particular dialect--he disdained to try
and read a single word of it, but from various sources he had picked
up words which he fitted into his speech as best it suited him, with
a result which was sometimes effective but more often startling.
Maryllia was well accustomed to it, and understood what she called
'Gigue's vernacular'--but the ladies and gentlemen of her house-
party were not so well instructed, and Mrs. Bludlip Courtenay, whose
knowledge of the French language was really quite extraordinary,
immediately essayed the famous singing-master in his own tongue.
"Esker vous avez un moovais passage, Mo'sieur?" she demanded, with
placid self-assurance--"Le mer etait bien mal?"
Gigue laughed, showing a row of very white strong teeth under his
grizzled moustache, as he accepted a cup of tea from Cicely's hand,
who gave him a meaning blink of her dark eyes as she demurely waited
upon him.
"Ah, Madame! Je parle ze Inglis seulement in ze England! Oui, oui!
Je mer etait comme l'huile, mais avec un so-so!" And he swayed his
hands to and fro with a rocking movement--"Et le so-so faisaient les
dames--ah, ciel!--so-so!"
And he placed his hand delicately to his head, with an inimitable
turning aside gesture that caused a ripple of laughter. Maryllia's
eyes sparkled with fun. She saw Mrs. Bludlip Courtenay surveying
Gigue through her lorgnon with an air of polite criticism amounting
to disdain,--she noted the men hanging back a little in the way that
well-born Britishers do hang back from a foreigner who is 'only' a
teacher of singing, especially if they cannot speak his language,--
and she began to enjoy herself. She knew that Gigue would say what
he thought or what he wanted to say, reckless of censure, and she
felt the refreshment and relief of having one, at least, in the
group of persons around her, who was not in her Aunt Emily's
service, and who uttered frankly his opinions regardless of results.
"Et maintenant,"--said Gigue, taking hold of Cicely's arm and
drawing her close up to his knee--"Comment chante le rossignol? Do,
re, mi, fa, sol, la, si, do! Chantez!"
All the members of the house-party stared,--they had taken scarcely
any notice of Cicely Bourne, looking upon her as more or less
beneath their notice--as a 'child picked up in Paris'--a 'waif and
stray'--a 'fad of Maryllia Vancourt's'--and now here was this wild
grey-haired man of renown bringing her into sudden prominent notice.
"Chantez!" reiterated Gigue, furrowing his brows into a commanding
frown--"Do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, si, do!"
Cicely's dark eyes flashed--and her lips parted.
"Do--re--mi--sol---"
Round and full and clear rang the notes, pure as a crystal bell,--
and the listeners held their breath, as she made such music of the
common scale as only a divinely-gifted singer can.
"Bien!--tres-bien!" said Gigue, approvingly, with a smile round at
the company--"Mademoiselle Cicely commence a chanter! Ze petite sera
une grande cantatrice! N'est-ce-pas?"
A stiffly civil wonderment seemed frozen on the faces of Lady
Beaulyon and the others present. Wholly lacking in enthusiasm for
any art, they almost resented the manner in which Cicely was thus
brought forward as a kind of genius, a being superior to them all.
Gigue sniffed the air, as though he inhaled offence in it. Then he
shook his finger with a kind of defiance.
"Mais--pas en Angleterre!" he said--"Ze petite va commencer a Milan-
-St. Petersburg--Vienna! Zen, ze Inglis vill say--'Ha ha! Zis prima
donna chante pour les Francais, les Italiens, les Russes!--il faut
qu'elle chante pour nous!' Zen--zey vill pay ze guinea--ces commes
des moutons! Zey follow les autres pays--zey know nosing of ze art
demselves!"
Mrs. Bludlip Courtenay coughed delicately.
"Music is so very much overdone in England"--she said, languidly--
"One gets so tired of it! Concerts are quite endless during the
season, and singers are always pestering you to take tickets. It's
quite too much for anyone who is not a millionaire."
Gigue did not catch this flow of speech--but Cicely heard it,
"Well, I shall never ask anyone to 'take tickets' to hear me!" she
said, laughing. "A famous prima donna never does that kind of
thing!"
"How do you know you will be famous?" asked Lady Beaulyon, amused.
"Instinct!" replied Cicely, gaily--"Just as the bird knows, it will
be able to make a nest, so do I know I shall be famous! Don't let us
talk any more about singing! Come and see the garden, Gigue!--I'll
take you round it--and I want a chat with you."
The two went off together, much to the relief of the rest of the
party.
"What an extraordinary-looking creature!" said Mrs. Bludlip
Courtenay--"Is he quite a gentleman, Maryllia?"
Maryllia smiled.
"He is a gentleman according to my standard," she said. "He is
honest, true to his friends, and faithful to his work. I ask nothing
more of any man."
She changed the subject of conversation,--and Mrs. Bludlip
Courtenay, in the privacy of her own apartment, confided to her
husband that she really thought Maryllia Vancourt was a little 'off
her head'--just a little.
"Because, really,"--said Mrs. Courtenay--"when it comes to
harbouring geniuses in one's own house, it is quite beyond all
reason. I sympathise so much with poor Mrs. Fred! If Maryllia would
only marry Lord Roxmouth, all these flighty and fantastic notions of
hers about music and faithful friends and honour and principle would
disappear. I am sure they would!--and she would calm down and be
just like one of us."
Mr. Bludlip Courtenay stared hard through his monocle.
"Why don't you talk to her about it?" he said--"You might do more
for Roxmouth than you are doing, Peggy! I may tell you it would mean
good times for both of us if you pushed that affair on!"
Mrs. Courtenay looked meditative.
"I'll try!"--she said, at last--"Roxmouth is to dine here to-morrow
night--I'll say something before he comes."
And she did. She took an opportunity of finding Maryllia alone in
her morning-room, where she was busy answering some letters. Gliding
in, without apology, she sank into the nearest comfortable chair.
"We shall soon all be gone from this dear darling old house!" she
said, with a sigh--"When are you coming back to London, Maryllia?"
"Never, I hope,"--Maryllia answered--"I am tired of London,--and if
I go anywhere away from here for a change it will be abroad--ever so
far distant!"
"With Lord Roxmouth?" suggested Mrs. Courtenay, with a subtle blink
in her eyes.
Maryllia laid down the pen she held, and looked straight at her.
"I think you are perfectly aware that I shall never go anywhere with
Lord Roxmouth,"--she said--"Please save yourself the trouble of
discussing this subject! I know how anxious you are upon the point--
Aunt Emily has, of course, asked you to use your influence to
persuade me into this detestable marriage--now do understand me,
once and for all, that it's no use. I would rather kill myself than
be Lord Roxmouth's wife!"
"But why--" began Mrs. Courtenay, feebly.
"Why? Because I know what kind of a man he is, and how
hypocritically he conceals his unnameable vices under a cloak of
respectability. I can tolerate anything but humbug,--remember that!"
Mrs. Courtenay winced, but stuck to her guns.
"I'm sure he's no worse than other men!"--she said--"And he's
perfectly devoted to you! It would be much better to be Duchess of
Ormistoune, than a poor lonely old maid looking after geniuses.
Geniuses are perfectly horrible persons! I've had experience with
them. Why, I tried to bring out a violinist once--such a dirty young
man, and he smelt terribly of garlic--he came from the Pyrenees--but
he was quite a marvellous fiddler--and he turned out most
ungratefully, and married my manicurist. Simply shocking! And as for
singers!--my dear Maryllia, you never seem to realise what an utter
little fright that Cicely Bourne of yours is! She will never get on
with a yellow face like that! And SUCH a figure!"
Maryllia laughed.
"Well, she's only fourteen---"
"Nonsense!" declared Mrs. Courtenay--"She tells you that--but she's
twenty, if she's a day! She's 'doing' you, all round, and so is that
artful old creature Gigue! Taking your money all for nothing!--you
may be sure the two of them are in a perfect conspiracy to rob you!
I can't imagine why you should go out of your way to pick up such
people--really I can't--when you might marry into one of the best
positions in England!"
Maryllia was silent. After a pause, she said gently:
"Is there anything else you want to tell me? I'm rather pressed for
time,--I have one or two letters to write---"
"Oh, I see you want to get rid of me," and Mrs. Courtenay rose from
her chair with a bounce--"You have become so rude lately, Maryllia,-
-you really have! Your aunt is quite right! But I'm glad you have
asked Roxmouth to dine to-night--that is at least one step in the
right direction! I'm sure if you will let him say a few words to you
alone---"
Maryllia lifted her eyes.
"I have already asked you to drop this subject," she said.
"Well!--if you persist in your obstinacy, you can only blame
yourself for losing a good chance,"--said Mrs. Courtenay, with real
irritation--"You won't see it, of course, but you're getting very
passee, Maryllia--and it's only an old friend of your aunt's like
myself that can tell you so. I have noticed several wrinkles round
your eyes--you should massage with some 'creme ivoire' and tap those
lines--you really should--tap on to them so---" and Mrs. Bludlip
Courtenay illustrated her instructions delicately on her own pink-
and-white dolly face with her finger-tips--"I spend quite an hour
every day tapping every line away round my eyes--but you've really
got more than I have---"
"I'm not so young as you are, perhaps!" said Maryllia, with a little
smile--"But I don't care a bit how I look! If I'm getting old, so is
everyone--it's no crime. If we live, we must also die. People who
sneer at age are likely to be sneered at themselves when their time
comes. And if I'm growing wrinkles, I'd rather have country ones
than town ones. See?"
"Dear me, what odd things you do say!" and Mrs. Bludlip Courtenay
shook out her skirts and glanced over her shoulder at her own
reflection in a convenient mirror--"You seem to be quite impossible
at times---"
"Yes,--Aunt Emily always said so!"--interposed Maryllia, quietly.
"And yet think of the advantages you have had!--the education--the
long course of travel!--you should really know the world by this
time better than you do?"--went on the irrepressible lady--"You
should surely be able to see that there is nothing so good for a
woman as a good marriage. Everything in a girl's life points to that
end--she is trained for it, dressed for it, brought up to it--and
yet here you are with a most brilliant position waiting for you to
step into it, and you turn your back upon it with contempt! What do
you imagine you can do with yourself down here all alone? There are
no people of your own class residing nearer to you than three or
four miles distant--the village is composed of vulgar rustics--the
rural town is inhabited only by tradespeople, and though one of your
near neighbours is Sir Morton Pippitt, one would hardly call him a
real gentleman--so there's really nobody at all for YOU to associate
with. Now is there?"
Maryllia glanced up, her eyes sparkling.
"You forget the parson!" she said.
"Oh, the parson!" And Mrs. Courtenay tittered. "Well, you're the
last woman in the world to associate with a parson! You're not a bit
religious!"
"No," said Maryllia--"I'm afraid I'm not!"
"And you couldn't do district visiting and soup kitchens and
mothers' meetings"--put in Mrs. Courtenay--"It would be too sordid
and dull for words. In fact, you wil simply die of ennui down here
when the summer is over. Now, if you married Roxmouth---"
"There would be a gall-moon, instead of a honey one," said Maryllia,
calmly,--"But there won't be either. I MUST finish my letters! Do
you mind leaving me to myself?"
Mrs. Courtenay tossed her head, bit her lip, and rustled out of the
room in a huff. She reported her ill-success with 'Maryllia Van' to
her husband, who, in his turn, reported it to Lord Roxmouth, who
straightway conveyed these and all other items of the progress or
retrogression of his wooing to Mrs. Fred Vancourt. That lady,
however, felt so perfectly confident that Roxmouth would,--with the
romantic surroundings of the Manor, and the exceptional
opportunities afforded by long afternoons and moonlit evenings,--
succeed where he had hitherto failed, that she almost selected
Maryllia's bridal gown, and went so far as to study the most
elaborate designs for wedding-cakes of a millionaire description.
"For,"--said she, with comfortable self-assurance--"St. Rest, as I
remember it, is just the dullest place I ever heard of, except
heaven! There are no men in it except dreadful hunting, drinking
provincial creatures who ride or play golf all day, and go to sleep
after dinner. That kind of thing will never suit Maryllia. She will
contrast Roxmouth with the rural boors, and as a mere matter of good
taste, she will acknowledge his superiority. And she will do as I
wish in the long run,--she will be Duchess of Ormistoune."