el
a great deal more comfortable in my mind."

"I don't think it matters one little bit," said Lord Mallow, with
appalling recklessness.

"It would matter immensely if we were travelling. Violet could not be
presented at any foreign court, or invited to any court ball. She would
be an outcast. I shall have to be presented myself, on my marriage with
Captain Winstanley. We shall go to London early in the spring. Conrad
will take a small house in Mayfair."

"If I can get one," said the captain doubtfully. "Small houses in
Mayfair are as hard to get nowadays as black pearls--and as dear."

"I am charmed to think you will be in town," exclaimed Lord Mallow;
"and, perhaps, some night when there is an Irish question on, you and
Miss Tempest might be induced to come to the Ladies' Gallery. Some
ladies rather enjoy a spirited debate."

"I should like it amazingly," cried Violet. "You are awfully rude to
one another, are you not? And you imitate cocks and hens; and do all
manner of dreadful things. It must be capital fun."

This was not at all the kind of appreciation Lord Mallow desired.

"Oh, yes; we are excruciatingly funny sometimes, I daresay, without
knowing it," he said, with a mortified air.

He was getting on the friendliest terms with Violet. He was almost as
much at home with her as Rorie was, except that she never called him by
his christian-name, nor flashed at him those lovely mirth-provoking
glances which he surprised sometimes on their way to Mr. Vawdrey. Those
two had a hundred small jokes and secrets that dated back to Vixen's
childhood. How could a new-comer hope to be on such delightful terms
with her? Lord Mallow felt this, and hated Roderick Vawdrey as
intensely as it was possible for a nature radically good and generous
to hate even a favoured rival. That Roderick was his rival, and was
favoured, were two ideas of which Lord Mallow could not dispossess
himself, notwithstanding the established fact of Mr. Vawdrey's
engagement to his cousin.

"A good many men begin life by being engaged to their cousins,"
reflected Lord Mallow. "A man's relations take it into their heads to
keep an estate in the family, and he is forthwith set at his cousin
like an unwilling terrier at a rat. I don't at all feel as if this
young man were permanently disposed of, in spite of all their talk; and
I'm very sure Miss Tempest likes him better than I should approve of
were I the cousin."

While he loitered over his sec