ree or four years old."

"Everybody would talk about it."

"Let 'em talk," said Dick heroically. "They couldn't talk you out
of your ease or your pleasure or your money. I never could find out
the harm of people talking about you. They might say whatever they
pleased of me for five hundred a year."

Then there came the news that Cecilia Holt was going to marry Mr.
Western. The tidings reached Sir Francis while the lovers were still
at Rome. Of Mr. Western Sir Francis knew something. In the first
place his cousin Walter Geraldine had taken away the girl to whom
Mr. Western had in the first instance been engaged. And then they
were in some degree neighbours, each possessing a small property in
Berkshire. Sir Francis had bought his now some years since for racing
purposes. It was adjacent to Ascot, and had been let or used by
himself during the racing week, as he had or had not been short of
money. Mr. Western's small property had come to him from his uncle.
But he had held it always in his own hands, and intended now to take
his bride there as soon as their short honeymoon trip should be over.
In this way Sir Francis had come to know something of Cecilia's
husband, and did not especially love him. "That young lady of mine
has picked up old Western on her travels." This Sir Francis said to
his friend Ross up in London. The reader however must remember that
"old Western" was in fact a younger man than Sir Francis himself.

"I suppose he's welcome to her?" said Ross.

"I'm not so sure of that. Of course he is welcome in one way. She'll
make him miserable and he'll do as much for her. You may let them
alone for that."

"Why should you care about it?"

"Well; I don't know. A fellow has a sort of feeling about a girl when
he has been spooning on her himself. He doesn't want to think that
another fellow is to pick her up immediately."

"Dog in the manger, you mean."

"You may call it that if you like. You never cared for any young
woman, I suppose?"

"Oh, haven't I! Lots of 'em. But if I couldn't get a girl myself I
never cared who had her. What's the good of being selfish?"

"What's the good of lying?" said Sir Francis, propounding a great
doctrine in sociology. "If I feel cut up what's the use of saying I
don't,--unless I want to deceive the man I'm talking to? If I feel
that I'd like a girl to be punished for her impertinence, what's the
use of my pretending to myself that I don't want it? If I wish a
person to