_, as French
vaudevillists say, without any thought of marriage.

Lady Usk has always known that he is horribly unprincipled,--more so
than even men of his world usually are. That bantering tone of his is
odious, she thinks; and he always has it, even on the gravest subjects.

"What's the row, my lady? You look ruffled!" inquires Usk, coming into
her boudoir with a sheaf of half-opened letters in his hand.

"There are always things to annoy one," she answers, vaguely.

"It is an arrangement of a prudential Providence to prevent our
affections being set on this world," replies Usk, piously.

His wife's only comment on this religious declaration is an impatient
twist to the tail of her Maltese dog.

Usk proceeds to turn over to her such letters as bore him; they are
countable by dozens; the two or three which interest him have been read
in the gun-room and put away in an inside pocket.

"Mr. Bruce could attend to all these," she says, looking with some
disgust at the correspondence. Bruce is his secretary.

"He always blunders," says Usk.

"Then change him," says his wife; nevertheless she is pleased at the
compliment implied to herself.

"All secretaries are fools," says Usk, impartially.

"Even secretaries of state," says Mr. Wootton, who has the _entree_ of
the boudoir, and saunters in at that moment. "I have some news this
morning," he adds: "Coltsfoot marries Miss Hoard."

"Never!" exclaims Dorothy Usk.

"Perfectly true," says Mr. Wootton. "Both of them staying at Dunrobin,
and engagement publicly announced."

Lord Coltsfoot is heir to a dukedom; Miss Hoard is the result in bullion
of iron-works.

"Never!" reiterates Lady Usk. "It is impossible that he can do such a
horrible thing! Why, she has one shoulder higher than the other, and red
eyes!"

"There are six millions paid down," replies Mr. Wootton, sententiously.

"What the deuce will Mrs. Donnington say?" asks Usk.

"One never announces any marriage," remarks Mr. Wootton, "but there is a
universal outcry about what will some lady, married long ago to somebody
else, say to it. Curious result of supposed monogamy!"

"It is quite disgusting!" says Lady Usk. "Some of those new people are
presentable, but she isn't; and Coltsfoot is so good-looking and so
young."

"It is what the French call an '_alliance tres comme il faut_,'" says
Usk, from sheer spirit of contradiction. "The dukedom is as full of
holes as an old tin pot; she tinkers it up w