ther, mother. I am sure that you do not think you have.
Say that you do not regret it. Dearest mother, say so for my sake. Do
you not know in your heart of hearts that she was not suited to be
happy as my wife,--or to make me happy?"

"Perhaps not," said Lady Lufton, sighing. And then she kissed her
son, and declared to herself that no girl in England could be good
enough for him.

CHAPTER XXXI

Salmon Fishing in Norway

Lord Dumbello's engagement with Griselda Grantly was the talk of the
town for the next ten days. It formed, at least, one of two subjects
which monopolized attention, the other being that dreadful rumour,
first put in motion by Tom Towers at Miss Dunstable's party, as to a
threatened dissolution of Parliament. "Perhaps, after all, it will be
the best thing for us," said Mr. Green Walker, who felt himself to be
tolerably safe at Crewe Junction.

"I regard it as a most wicked attempt," said Harold Smith, who was
not equally secure in his own borough, and to whom the expense of
an election was disagreeable. "It is done in order that they may
get time to tide over the autumn. They won't gain ten votes by a
dissolution, and less than forty would hardly give them a majority.
But they have no sense of public duty--none whatever. Indeed, I don't
know who has."

"No, by Jove; that's just it. That's what my aunt Lady Hartletop
says; there is no sense of duty left in the world. By the by, what an
uncommon fool Dumbello is making himself!" And then the conversation
went off to that other topic.

Lord Lufton's joke against himself about the willow branches was all
very well, and nobody dreamed that his heart was sore in that matter.
The world was laughing at Lord Dumbello for what it chose to call
a foolish match, and Lord Lufton's friends talked to him about it
as though they had never suspected that he could have made an ass
of himself in the same direction; but, nevertheless, he was not
altogether contented. He by no means wished to marry Griselda; he
had declared to himself a dozen times since he had first suspected
his mother's manoeuvres that no consideration on earth should
induce him to do so; he had pronounced her to be cold, insipid, and
unattractive in spite of her beauty: and yet he felt almost angry
that Lord Dumbello should have been successful. And this, too,
was the more inexcusable, seeing that he had never forgotten Lucy
Robarts, had never ceased to love her, and that, in holding