“Now, Mrs. Mellot, I can’t help looking up to you as a mother.”

“Complimentary to my youth,” says Sabina, who always calls herself young when she is called old, and old when she is called young.

“I didn’t mean to be rude.  But one does long to open one’s heart.  I never had any mother to talk to, you know; and I can’t tell my aunt; and Valencia is so flighty; and I thought you would give me one chance more.  Don’t laugh at me, I say.  I am really past laughing at.”

“I see you are, you poor creature,” says Sabina, melting; and a long conversation follows, while Claude and Bowie exchange confidences, and arrive at no result beyond the undeniable assertion; “it is a very bad job.”

Presently Sabina comes out, and Scoutbush calls cheerfully from the sofa:—­

“Bowie, get my bath and things to dress; and order me the cab in half an hour.  Good-bye, you dear people, I shall never thank you enough.”

Away go Claude and Sabina in a hack-cab.

“What have you done?”

“Given him what he entreated for—­another chance with Marie.”

“It will only madden him all the more.  Why let him try, when you know it is hopeless.”

“Why, I had not the heart to refuse, that’s the truth; and besides, I don’t know that it is hopeless.”

“All the naughtier of you, to let him run the chance of making a fool of himself.”

“I don’t know that he will make such a great fool of himself.  As he says, his grandfather married an actress, and why should not he?”

“Simply because she won’t marry him.”

“And how do you know that, sir?  You fancy that you understand all the women’s hearts in England, just because you have found out the secret of managing one little fool.”

“Managing her, quotha!  Being managed by her, till my quiet house is turned into a perfect volcano of match-making.  Why, I thought he was to marry Manchestrina.”

“He shall marry who he likes; and if Marie changes her mind, and revenges herself on this American by taking Lord Scoutbush, all I can say is, it will be a just judgment on him.  I have no patience with the heartless fellow, going off thus, and never even leaving his address.”

“And because you have no patience, you think Marie will have none?”

“What do you know about women’s hearts?  Leave us to mind our own matters.”

“Mr. Bowie will kill you outright, if your plot succeeds.”

“No, he won’t.  I know who Bowie wants to marry; and if he is not good, he shan’t have her.  Besides, it will be such fun to spite old Lady Knockdown, who always turns up her nose at me.  How mad she will be!  Here we are at home.  Now, I shall go and prepare Marie.”

An hour after, Scoutbush was pleading his cause with Marie; and had been met, of course, at starting, with the simple rejoinder,—­

“But, my lord, you would not surely have me marry where I do not love?”