did the best he could to think of Lily herself as of a great treasure
which he had won,--as of a treasure which should, and perhaps would,
compensate him for his misery. But there was the misery very plain.
He must give up his clubs, and his fashion, and all that he had
hitherto gained, and be content to live a plain, humdrum, domestic
life, with eight hundred a year, and a small house, full of babies.
It was not the kind of Elysium for which he had tutored himself. Lily
was very nice, very nice indeed. She was, as he said to himself, "by
odds, the nicest girl that he had ever seen." Whatever might now turn
up, her happiness should be his first care. But as for his own,--he
began to fear that the compensation would hardly be perfect. "It
is my own doing," he said to himself, intending to be rather noble
in the purport of his soliloquy, "I have trained myself for other
things,--very foolishly. Of course I must suffer,--suffer damnably.
But she shall never know it. Dear, sweet, innocent, pretty little
thing!" And then he went on about the squire, as to whom he felt
himself entitled to be indignant by his own disinterested and manly
line of conduct towards the niece. "But I will let him know what I
think about it," he said. "It's all very well for Dale to say that I
have been treated fairly. It isn't fair for a man to put forward his
niece under false pretences. Of course I thought that he intended to
provide for her." And then, having made up his mind in a very manly
way that he would not desert Lily altogether after having promised
to marry her, he endeavoured to find consolation in the reflection
that he might, at any rate, allow himself two years' more run as a
bachelor in London. Girls who have to get themselves married without
fortunes always know that they will have to wait. Indeed, Lily had
already told him, that as far as she was concerned, she was in
no hurry. He need not, therefore, at once withdraw his name from
Sebright's. Thus he endeavoured to console himself, still, however,
resolving that he would have a little serious conversation with the
squire that very evening as to Lily's fortune.

And what was the state of Lily's mind at the same moment, while she,
also, was performing some slight toilet changes preparatory to their
simple dinner at the Small House?

"I didn't behave well to him," she said to herself; "I never do. I
forget how much he is giving up for me; and then, when anything
annoys him, I mak