is a charming young man"--she spoke judicially--"charming! But
in effect Mary was quite right; she generally is--he is not
sincere."

"I think you are wrong," said Rainham after a moment. "I should be
sorry to believe you were not, for the little girl's sake. And I
have known him a long time; he is a good fellow at bottom."

"Ah!" cried Lady Garnett with a little, quick gesture of her right
hand, "that is precisely what he is not. He exaggerates; he must be
very secret; no one ever was so frank as he seems to be."

"Why are you saying all this to me?" the other asked after a moment.
"You know I should be very sorry; but what can I do? it's arranged."

"I think you might have prevented it, if you had cared; but, as you
say, it is too late now."

"There was no way possible in which I could have prevented it," he
said slowly, after an interval which seemed to strike them both as
ponderous.

"That was an admission I wanted," she flashed back. "You _would_ have
prevented it--you would have given worlds to have prevented it."

His retort came as quickly, accented by a smile:

"Not a halfpenny. I make no admissions; and I have not the faintest
idea of what you are driving at. I am a pure spectator. To quote
yourself, I don't make marriages, nor mar them; I think too ill of
life."

"Ah no!" she said; "it is that you are too indolent; you disappoint
me."

"It is you, dear lady, who are inconsistent," he cried, laughing.

"No, you disappoint me," she resumed; "seriously, my dear, I am
dissatisfied with you. You will not assert yourself; you do nothing;
you have done nothing. There never was a man who made less of his
life."

He protested laughingly:

"I have had no time; I have been looking after my lungs."

"Ah, you are incorrigible," she exclaimed, rising; "let us go and
find Mary. I give you up; or, rather, I give myself up, as an
adviser. For, after all, you are right--there is nothing worth doing
in this bad world except looking after one's lung, or whatever it
may be."

"Perhaps not even that," said Philip, as he followed her from the
room; "even that, after a time, becomes monotonous."

CHAPTER XIV

It occurred to Lightmark one evening, as he groped through the gloom
of his studio, on his way to bed, after assisting at a very charming
social gathering at the Sylvesters', that as soon as he was married
he would have to cut Brodonowski's. The reasons he gave himself were
plausible enough, and, i