That's nonsense, Miss Cass, and I shall," said Lady Mabel. They were
together, on the morning after the little dinner-party described in
the last chapter, in a small back sitting-room which was supposed to
be Lady Mabel's own, and the servant had just announced the fact that
Mr. Tregear was below.

"Then I shall go down too," said Miss Cassewary.

"You'll do nothing of the kind. Will you please to tell me what it is
you are afraid of? Do you think that Frank is going to make love to
me again?"

"No."

"Or that if I chose that he should I would let you stop me? He is
in love with somebody else,--and perhaps I am too. And we are two
paupers."

"My lord would not approve of it."

"If you know what my lord approves of and what he disapproves you
understand him a great deal better than I do. And if you mind what
he approves or disapproves, you care for his opinion a great deal
more than I do. My cousin is here now to talk to me,--about his own
affairs, and I mean to see him,--alone." Then she left the little
room, and went down to that in which Frank was waiting for her,
without the company of Miss Cassewary.

"Do you really mean," she said after they had been together for some
minutes, "that you had the courage to ask the Duke for his daughter's
hand?"

"Why not?"

"I believe you would dare do anything."

"I couldn't very well take it without asking him."

"As I am not acquainted with the young lady I don't know how that
might be."

"And if I took her so, I should have to take her empty-handed."

"Which wouldn't suit;--would it?"

"It wouldn't suit for her,--whose comforts and happiness are much
more to me than my own."

"No doubt! Of course you are terribly in love."

"Very thoroughly in love, I think, I am."

"For the tenth time, I should say."

"For the second only. I don't regard myself as a monument of
constancy, but I think I am less fickle than some other people."

"Meaning me!"

"Not especially."

"Frank, that is ill-natured, and almost unmanly,--and false also.
When have I been fickle? You say that there was one before with you.
I say that there has never really been one with me at all. No one
knows that better than yourself. I cannot afford to be in love till I
am quite sure that the man is fit to be, and will be, my husband."

"I doubt sometimes whether you are capable of being in love with any
one."

"I think I am," she said, very gently. "But I am at any rate capable
of not bei