to overcome the fatal error of your
parents. You're a splen'id gen'l'man. Your 'xception proves rule. Even
Germans can't all be perf'ly rotten."

"Thank you, Marquess, thank you," said Sir Joseph, with a natural
embarrassment.

Marie Louise noted the slight difference between the English "Thank
you" and Sir Joseph's "Thang gyou."

Then Lady Webling's eyes went around the table, catching up the
women's eyes and forms, and she led them in a troop from the
embarrassing scene. She brought the embarrassment with her to the
drawing-room, where the women sat about smoking miserably and waiting
for the men to come forth and take them home.

CHAPTER III

There must have been embarrassment enough left to go round the
dining-table, too, for in an unusually brief while the men flocked
into the drawing-room. And they began to plead engagements in offices
or homes or Parliament.

It was not yet ten o'clock when the last of the guests had gone,
except Nicholas Easton. And Sir Joseph took him into his own study.
Easton walked a trifle too solemnly straight, as if he had set himself
an imaginary chalk-line to follow. He jostled against the door, and as
he closed it, swung with it uncertainly.

Lady Webling asked almost at once, with a nod of the head in the
direction of the study door:

"Well, my dear child, what do you think of Nicky?"

"Oh, I don't know. He's nice, but--"

"We're very fond of him, Sir Joseph and I--and we do hope you will
be."

Marie Louise wondered if they were going to select a husband for her.
It was a dreadful situation, because there was no compulsion except
the compulsion of obligation. They never gave her a chance to do
anything for them; they were always doing things for her. What an
ingrate she would be to rebuff their first real desire! And yet to
marry a man she felt such antipathy for--surely there could be some
less hateful way of obliging her benefactors. She felt like a castaway
on a desert, and there was something of the wilderness in the
immensity of the drawing-room with its crowds of untenanted divans and
of empty chairs drawn into groups as the departed guests had left
them.

Lady Webling stood close to Marie Louise and pressed for an answer.

"You don't really dislike Nicky, do you?"

"N-o-o. I've not known him long enough to dislike him very well."

She tried to soften the rebuff with a laugh, but Lady Webling sighed
profoundly and smothered her disappointment in a f