e's ten months now?"

"No. Only six."

"Great Scott! He's big!" said Edward Henry.

"Well," said she, "he is. I am, you see."

"Now, Lady Woldo," said Edward Henry in a new tone, "as we're both
from the same part of the country I want to be perfectly straight and
above-board with you. It's quite true--all that about the rash. And I
did think you'd like to know. But that's not really what I came to see
you about. You understand, not knowing you, I fancied there might be
some difficulty in getting at you--"

"Oh! no!" she said simply. "Everybody gets at me."

"Well, I didn't know, you see. So I just mentioned the baby to begin
with, like!"

"I hope you're not after money," she said, almost plaintively.

"I'm not," he said. "You can ask anybody in Bursley or Hanbridge
whether I'm the sort of man to go out on the cadge."

"I once was in the chorus in a panto at Hanbridge," she said. "Don't
they call Bursley 'Bosley' down there--'owd Bosley'?"

Edward Henry dealt suitably with these remarks, and then gave her a
judicious version of the nature of his business, referring several
times to Mr. Rollo Wrissell.

"Mr. Wrissell!" she murmured, smiling.

"In the end I told Mr. Wrissell to go and bury himself," said Edward
Henry. "And that's about as far as I've got."

"Oh, don't!" she said, her voice weak from suppressed laughter, and
then the laughter burst forth uncontrollable.

"Yes," he said, delighted with himself and her. "I told him to go and
bury himself!" "I suppose you don't like Mr. Wrissell?"

"Well--" he temporized.

"I didn't at first," she said. "I hated him. But I like him now,
though I must say I adore teasing him. Mr. Wrissell is what I call
a gentleman. You know he was Lord Woldo's heir. And when Lord Woldo
married me it was a bit of a blow for him! But he took it like a lamb.
He never turned a hair, and he was more polite than any of them.
I daresay you know Lord Woldo saw me in a musical comedy at
Scarborough--he has a place near there, ye know. Mr. Wrissell had
made him angry about some of his New Thought fads, and I do believe
he asked me to marry him just to annoy Mr. Wrissell. He used to say to
me, my husband did, that he'd married me in too much of a hurry,
and that it was too bad on Mr. Wrissell. And then he laughed, and I
laughed too. 'After all,' he used to say, my husband did, 'To marry an
actress is an accident that might happen to any member of the House
of Lords--and it does happe