ude is not
eight-and-twenty.'

'Ain't she, though? Will you have a ten-pound note on it that she's not
over thirty-one; and I can tell you who could decide the wager?'

'A delicate thought!--a fellow betting on the age of the girl he's going to
marry!'

[Illustration: He entered and Nina arose as he came forward.]

'Ten o'clock!--nearly half-past ten!' said Lockwood, rising from his chair.
'I must go and have some breakfast. I meant to have been down in time
to-day, and breakfasted with the old fellow and his daughter; for coming
late brings me to a _tete-a-tete_ with the Greek damsel, and it isn't
jolly, I assure you.'

'Don't you speak?'

'Never a word?' She's generally reading a newspaper when I go in. She lays
it down; but after remarking that she fears I'll find the coffee cold, she
goes on with her breakfast, kisses her Maltese terrier, asks him a few
questions about his health, and whether he would like to be in a warmer
climate, and then sails away.'

'And how she walks!'

'Is she bored here?'

'She says not.'

'She can scarcely like these people; they 're not the sort of thing she has
ever been used to.'

'She tells me she likes them: they certainly like her.'

'Well,' said Lockwood, with a sigh, 'she's the most beautiful woman,
certainly, I've ever seen; and, at this moment, I'd rather eat a crust with
a glass of beer under a hedge than I'd go down and sit at breakfast with
her.'

'I'll be shot if I'll not tell her that speech the first day I'm down
again.'

'So you may, for by that time I shall have seen her for the last time.'
And with this he strolled out of the room and down the stairs towards the
breakfast-parlour.

As he stood at the door he heard the sound of voices laughing and talking
pleasantly. He entered, and Nina arose as he came forward, and said, 'Let
me present my cousin--Mr. Richard Kearney, Major Lockwood; his friend, Mr.
Atlee.'

The two young men stood up--Kearny stiff and haughty, and Atlee with a
sort of easy assurance that seemed to suit his good-looking but certainly
snobbish style. As for Lockwood, he was too much a gentleman to have more
than one manner, and he received these two men as he would have received
any other two of any rank anywhere.

'These gentlemen have been showing me some strange versions of our little
incident here in the Dublin papers,' said Nina to Lockwood. 'I scarcely
thought we should become so famous.'

'I suppose they don't stickle muc