dn't be very much surprised," added Lord Mallow meditatively, "if
in ten years more the world were to go to sleep again and forget him."

Lady Mabel looked at her watch.

"I think I will go in and give mamma her afternoon cup of tea," she
said.

"Don't go yet," pleaded Lord Mallow, "it is only four, and I know the
Duchess does not take tea till five. Give me one of your last hours. A
lady who is just going to be married is something like Socrates after
his sentence. Her friends surround her; she is in their midst, smiling,
serene, diffusing sweetness and light; but they know she is going from
them--they are to lose her, yes, to lose her almost as utterly as if
she were doomed to die."

"That is taking a very dismal view of marriage," said Mabel, pale, and
trifling nervously with her watch-chain.

This was the first time Lord Mallow had spoken to her of the
approaching event.

"Is it not like death? Does it not bring change and parting to old
friends? When you are Lady Mabel Vawdrey, can I ever be with you as I
am now? You will have new interests, you will be shut in by a network
of new ties. I shall come some morning to see you amidst your new
surroundings, and shall find a stranger. My Lady Mabel will be dead and
buried."

There is no knowing how long Lord Mallow might have meandered on in
this dismal strain, if he had not been seasonably interrupted by the
arrival of Mr. Vawdrey, who came sauntering along the winding
shrubbery-walk, with his favourite pointer Hecate at his heels. He
advanced towards his betrothed at the leisurely pace of a man whose
courtship is over, whose fate is sealed, and from whom society exacts
nothing further, except a decent compliance with the arrangements other
people make for him.

He seemed in no wise disconcerted at finding his sweetheart and Lord
Mallow seated side by side, alone, in that romantic and solitary spot.
He pressed Mabel's hand kindly, and gave the Irishman a friendly nod.

"What have you been doing with yourself all the morning, Roderick?"
asked Lady Mabel, with that half-reproachful air which is almost the
normal expression of a betrothed young lady in her converse with her
lover.

"Oh, pottering about at Briarwood. The workmen are such fools. I am
making some slight alterations in the stables, on a plan of my
own--putting in mangers, and racks, and pillars, and partitions, from
the St. Pancras Ironworks, making sanitary improvements and so on--and
I have to