Nothing startled him, nothing chilled him.  When madame, laying her hand on his arm, said in a kind of playful candor infinitely bewitching, “Remember, dear friend, I told you beforehand that I have lost all my fortune; in marrying me you marry only myself with my past, my child and my liabilities,” his mind repudiated the idea of the flimsiest shadow on that past, the faintest blur on its spotless record.  As for her child, it was his:  he would give it his name, it should be dearer to him than his own; which, all things considered, was not an overwhelming provision of love; and her liabilities, whatever they were, he would be glad to discharge them as a proof of his love for her and the forging of another golden link between them.

He doubted nothing, believed all, and loved as much as he believed.  He was happy, radiant, content:  the woman whom he loved loved him, and had consented to become his wife.  In giving her dear self to him she was also accepting security and devotion at his hands; and what more can a true man want than to be of good service to the woman he loves?  If women like to minister, it is the pride of men to protect; and if the vow to endow with all his worldly goods is a fable in fact, it is true as an instinctive feeling.

When Mrs. Harrowby heard that the marriage was positively arranged, she sat with her daughters at a kind of inquest on their dead friendship with Sebastian Dundas, and came to the conclusion that they must know something more definite now about this person calling herself Madame la Marquise de Montfort.  As a stranger it was all very well to overlook the vagueness of her biography—­they were not committed to anything really dangerous by simply visiting a householder among them—­but it was another matter if she was to be married to one of themselves.  Then they must learn who she really was, and Mr. Dundas must satisfy them scrupulously, else they should decline to know her.

“It will make a great gap in our society,” said kindly Josephine, who, having the most to suffer, had forgiven the most readily.

“Gap or no gap, it is what we owe to ourselves,” said Mrs. Harrowby.

“And to Edgar,” added Maria.

“I shall call on Sebastian to-morrow,” said Mrs. Harrowby, laying aside her knitting with the air of a minister who has dictated his protocol and has now only to sign the clean copy.

“Sleep on it, mamma,” pleaded Josephine.

“It will make no difference,” returned the mother; and her elder two echoed in concert, “I hope not.”

The next day Mrs. Harrowby did call on Mr. Dundas, and, finding that gentleman at home, succeeded in speaking her mind.  She conveyed her ultimatum as a corporate not individual resolution, speaking in the name of the “ladies of the place,” which she was scarcely entitled to do.