t changed much except to get a bit fatter and more prosperous-
looking. Of course, we talked about her ladyship, and I told him what
she said.

"Rum things, women," he says; "never know their own minds."

"Oh, they know them all right when they get there," I says. "How could
she tell what being a Marchioness was like till she'd tried it?"

"Pity," he says, musing like. "I reckoned it the very thing she'd tumble
to. I only come over to get a sight of 'er, and to satisfy myself as she
was getting along all right. Seems I'd better a' stopped away."

"You ain't ever thought of marrying yourself?" I asks.

"Yes, I have," he says. "It's slow for a man over thirty with no wife
and kids to bustle him, you take it from me, and I ain't the talent for
the Don Juan fake."

"You're like me," I says, "a day's work, and then a pipe by your own
fireside with your slippers on. That's my swarry. You'll find someone
as will suit you before long."

"No I shan't," says he. "I've come across a few as might, if it 'adn't
been for 'er. It's like the toffs as come out our way. They've been
brought up on 'ris de veau a la financier,' and sich like, and it just
spoils 'em for the bacon and greens."

I give her the office the next time I see her, and they met accidental
like in Kensington Gardens early one morning. What they said to one
another I don't know, for he sailed that same evening, and, it being the
end of the season, I didn't see her ladyship again for a long while.

When I did it was at the Hotel Bristol in Paris, and she was in widow's
weeds, the Marquis having died eight months before. He never dropped
into that dukedom, the kid turning out healthier than was expected, and
hanging on; so she was still only a Marchioness, and her fortune, though
tidy, was nothing very big--not as that class reckons. By luck I was
told off to wait on her, she having asked for someone as could speak
English. She seemed glad to see me and to talk to me.

"Well," I says, "I suppose you'll be bossing that bar in Capetown now
before long?"

"Talk sense," she answers. "How can the Marchioness of Appleford marry a
hotel keeper?"

"Why not," I says, "if she fancies him? What's the good of being a
Marchioness if you can't do what you like?"

"That's just it," she snaps out; "you can't. It would not be doing the
straight thing by the family. No," she says, "I've spent their money,
and I'm spending it now. They don't love me, but