e to your swell relations; it is not worth _my_ while to
waste time on people who cant earn their own living. And never mind your
governor: we can get on without him. If you are hard up for money, and
he is stingy, you had better get it from me than from the Jews."

"I couldnt do that," said Marmaduke, touched. "In fact, I am well enough
off. By the bye, I must not forget to pay you for that lunch. But if I
ever am hard up, I will come to you. Will that do?"

"Of course: that is what I meant. Confound it, here we are already. You
mustnt come in, you would only be in the way. Come to-night after the
burlesque, if you like. Youre not angry with me, are you?"

Her breast touched his arm just then; and as if she had released some
spring, all his love for her suddenly surged up within him and got the
better of him. "Wait--listen," he said, in a voice half choked with
tenderness. "Look here, Lalage: the honest truth is that I shall be
ruined if I marry you openly. Let us be married quietly, and keep it
dark until I am more independent."

"Married! Catch me at it--if you can. No, dear boy, I am very fond of
you, and you are one of the right sort to make me the offer; but I wont
let you put a collar round _my_ neck. Matrimony is all very fine for
women who have no better way of supporting themselves, but it wouldnt
suit me. Dont look so dazed. What difference does it make to _you_?"

"But----" He stopped, bewildered, gazing at her.

"Get out, you great goose!" she said, and suddenly sprang out of the
hansom and darted into the theatre.

He sat gaping after her, horrified--genuinely horrified.

CHAPTER III

The Earl of Carbury was a youngish man with no sort of turn for being a
nobleman. He could not bring himself to behave as if he was anybody in
particular; and though this passed for perfect breeding whenever he by
chance appeared in his place in society, on the magisterial bench, or in
the House of Lords, it prevented him from making the most of the
earldom, and was a standing grievance with his relatives, many of whom
were the most impudent and uppish people on the face of the earth. He
was, if he had only known it, a born republican, with no natural belief
in earls at all; but as he was rather too modest to indulge his
consciousness with broad generalizations of this kind, all he knew about
the matter was that he was sensible of being a bad hand at his
hereditary trade of territorial aristocrat. At a very e