m knew much about his sister Mary. But
Popplecourt himself was divinely innocent. His ideas of marriage had
as yet gone no farther than a conviction that girls generally were
things which would be pressed on him, and against which he must arm
himself with some shield. Marriage would have to come, no doubt; but
not the less was it his duty to live as though it were a pit towards
which he would be tempted by female allurements. But that a net
should be spread over him here he was much too humble-minded to
imagine.

"Very hot," he said to Lady Mary.

"We found it warm in church to-day."

"I dare say. I came down here with your brother in his hansom cab.
What a very odd thing to have a hansom cab!"

"I should like one."

"Should you indeed?"

"Particularly if I could drive it myself. Silverbridge does, at
night, when he thinks people won't see him."

"Drive the cab in the streets! What does he do with his man?"

"Puts him inside. He was out once without the man and took up a
fare,--an old woman, he said. And when she was going to pay him he
touched his hat and said he never took money from ladies."

"Do you believe that?"

"Oh yes. I call that good fun, because it did no harm. He had his
lark. The lady was taken where she wanted to go, and she saved her
money."

"Suppose he had upset her," said Lord Popplecourt, looking as an old
philosopher might have looked when he had found some clenching answer
to another philosopher's argument.

"The real cabman might have upset her worse," said Lady Mary.

"Don't you feel it odd that we should meet here?" said Lord
Silverbridge to his neighbour, Lady Mabel.

"Anything unexpected is odd," said Lady Mabel. It seemed to her to be
very odd,--unless certain people had made up their minds as to the
expediency of a certain event.

"That is what you call logic;--isn't it? Anything unexpected is odd!"

"Lord Silverbridge, I won't be laughed at. You have been at Oxford
and ought to know what logic is."

"That at any rate is ill-natured," he replied, turning very red in
the face.

"You don't think I meant it. Oh, Lord Silverbridge, say that you
don't think I meant it. You cannot think I would willingly wound
you. Indeed, indeed, I was not thinking." It had in truth been
an accident. She could not speak aloud because they were closely
surrounded by others, but she looked up in his face to see whether
he were angry with her. "Say that you do not think I meant it."

"I do