tary to
Dick, but he doesn't seem to mind, and is enjoying himself immensely in
his own deliciously, impertinently, perky way. Somehow or other he has
induced her to be more or less engaged to him, a temporary arrangement,
I understand, but pleasing to him and convenient to me. What Dick gets
out of it, I don't know, and don't enquire; but _I_ get out of it the
satisfaction of "shelving" the girl as a possible rival.

Sir Lionel, who (it's useless to spare your motherly vanity!) has no
very warm appreciation of Dick's qualities, is disgusted with his ward
for encouraging D.'s advances, and is inclined to turn to me for
sympathy. In that branch I am a great success, and altogether am getting
on like a house afire. What if I do have to pump up an intelligent
interest in politics in general, and affairs in the Far East in
particular? I am fortunately so constituted that fifteen minutes' study
of the _Times_, washed down by early tea (taken strong), enables me to
discourse brilliantly on the deepest subjects during the day; and, thank
goodness, virtue is rewarded in the evening with a little bridge. If I
am ever Lady Pendragon (sounds well, doesn't it?) it shall be all bridge
and skittles, for me--and devil take politics, military science,
history, the classics, Herbert Spencer, Robert Browning, Shakespeare,
and all other boring or out-of-date things and writers (if he hasn't
already taken them) on which I am now obliged to keep up a sort of
Maxim-fire of conversation.

As to Dick's affairs, however, if the girl really is the heiress we
thought her, I shall be only too glad to use my influence in every
direction at once, to make the temporary arrangement a permanent one.
But the worst of it is, I'm not at all sure that she is any sort of an
heiress.

Sir Lionel intimated to me the other night, when I was tactfully
tickling him with hints, that she has little except what he may choose
to give her. If that be true, I fear as Mrs. Dick her _dot_ will not be
large; but it strikes me as very probable that he was only trying to put
me off--or rather, to put Dick off, if Dick were fortune-hunting. I
don't know whether to believe his version or not, therefore; but I did
get at one fact which may help us to find out for ourselves. Dear
Ellaline is a daughter of _Frederic_ Lethbridge. It was rather a shock
to hear this, for I have a vague impression that there was once a
scandal, quite a ripe, juicy scandal, about a Frederic Lethb