ings about which I suppose we had better speak. I'm going
to be married!"

"To be married!" The tone in which Mr. Maule, senior, repeated the
words was much the same as might be used by any ordinary father if
his son expressed an intention of going into the shoe-black business.

"Yes, sir. It's a kind of thing men do sometimes."

"No doubt;--and it's a kind of thing that they sometimes repent of
having done."

"Let us hope for the best. It is too late at any rate to think about
that, and as it is to be done, I have come to tell you."

"Very well. I suppose you are right to tell me. Of course you know
that I can do nothing for you; and I don't suppose that you can do
anything for me. As far as your own welfare goes, if she has a large
fortune,--"

"She has no fortune."

"No fortune!"

"Two or three thousand pounds perhaps."

"Then I look upon it as an act of simple madness, and can only say
that as such I shall treat it. I have nothing in my power, and
therefore I can neither do you good or harm; but I will not hear
any particulars, and I can only advise you to break it off, let the
trouble be what it may."

"I certainly shall not do that, sir."

"Then I have nothing more to say. Don't ask me to be present, and
don't ask me to see her."

"You haven't heard her name yet."

"I do not care one straw what her name is."

"It is Adelaide Palliser."

"Adelaide Muggins would be exactly the same thing to me. My dear
Gerard, I have lived too long in the world to believe that men can
coin into money the noble blood of well-born wives. Twenty thousand
pounds is worth more than all the blood of all the Howards, and
a wife even with twenty thousand pounds would make you a poor,
embarrassed, and half-famished man."

"Then I suppose I shall be whole famished, as she certainly has not
got a quarter of that sum."

"No doubt you will."

"Yet, sir, married men with families have lived on my income."

"And on less than a quarter of it. The very respectable man who
brushes my clothes no doubt does so. But then you see he has been
brought up in that way. I suppose that you as a bachelor put by every
year at least half your income?"

"I never put by a shilling, sir. Indeed, I owe a few hundred pounds."

"And yet you expect to keep a house over your head, and an expensive
wife and family, with lady's maid, nurses, cook, footman, and grooms,
on a sum which has been hitherto insufficient for your own wants! I
didn't t