matter?'

'Nothing; get away!'

'Civil! But you will remember your promise about White's?'

'Ay! ay! I shall remember you when you are proposed.'

'Here, here is a business!' soliloquized the young Duke. 'May Dacre!
What a fool I have been! Shall I shoot myself through the head, or
embrace her on the spot? Lord St. Jerome, too! He seems mightily
pleased. And my family have been voting for two centuries to emancipate
this fellow! Curse his grinning face! I am decidedly anti-Catholic. But
then she is a Catholic! I will turn Papist. Ah! there is Lucy. I want a
counsellor.'

He turned to his fellow-steward. 'Oh, Lucy! such a woman! such an
incident!'

'What! the inimitable Miss Dacre, I suppose. Everybody speaking of her;
wherever I go, one subject of conversation. Burlington wanting to
waltz with her, Charles Annesley being introduced, and Lady Bloomerly
decidedly of opinion that she is the finest creature in the county.
Well, have you danced with her?'

'Danced, my dear fellow! Do not speak to me.'

'What is the matter?'

'The most diabolical matter that you ever heard of.'

'Well, well?'

'I have not even been introduced.'

'Well! come on at once.'

'I cannot.'

'Are you mad?'

'Worse than mad. Where is her father?'

'Who cares?'

'I do. In a word, my dear Lucy, her father is that guardian whom I have
perhaps mentioned to you, and to whom I have behaved so delicately.'

'Why! I thought your guardian was an old curmudgeon.'

'What does that signify, with such a daughter!'

'Oh! here is some mistake. This is the only child of Dacre of Castle
Dacre, a most delightful fellow; one of the first fellows in the county;
I was introduced to him to-day on the course. I thought you knew them.
You were admiring his outriders to-day, the green and silver.'

'Why, Bag told me they were old Lord Sunderland's.'

'Bag! How can you believe a word that booby says? He always has an
answer. To-day, when Afy drove in, I asked Bag who she was, and he said
it was his aunt, Lady de Courcy. I begged to be introduced, and took
over the blushing Bag and presented him.'

'But the father; the father, Lucy! How shall I get out of this scrape?'

'Oh! put on a bold face. Here! give him this ring, and swear you
procured it for him at Genoa, and then say that, now you are here, you
will try his pheasants.'

'My dear fellow, you always joke. I am in agony. Seriously, what shall I
do?'

'Why, seriously, be introduced to hi