Sir Everard opened his eyes in cool surprise.

“My dear mother, you mistake,” he said, with perfect sang froid.  “Lady Louise made love to me!”

“Everard!”

Her voice absolutely choked with rage.

“It sounds conceited and foppish, I know,” pursued the young gentleman; “but you force me to it in self-defense.  I never made love to Lady Louise, as Lady Louise can tell you, if you choose to ask.”

“You never asked her in so many words, perhaps, to be your wife.  Short of that, you have left nothing undone.”

Sir Everard thought of the dinner-party, of the moonlit balcony, of George Grosvenor, and was guiltily silent.

“Providence must have sent him,” he thought, “to save me in the last supreme moment.  Pledged to Lady Louise, and madly in love with Harriet Hunsden, I should blow out my brains before sunset!”

“You are silent,” pursued his mother.  “Your guilty conscience will not let you answer.  You told me yourself, only two days ago, that but for George Grosvenor you would have asked her to be your wife.”

“Quite true,” responded her son:  “but who knows what a day may bring forth?  Two days ago I was willing to marry Lady Louise—­to ask her, at least.  Now, not all the wealth of the Indies, not the crown of the world could tempt me.”

“Good heavens!” cried my lady, goaded to the end of her patience; “only hear him!  Do you mean to tell me, you absurd, mad-headed boy, that in one day you have fallen hopelessly in love with this hare-brained, masculine Harriet Hunsden?”

“I tell you nothing of the sort, madame; the inference is your own.  But this I will say—­I would rather marry Harriet Hunsden than any other woman under heaven!  Let Lady Louise take George Grosvenor.  He is in love with her, which I never was; and he has an earl’s coronet in prospective, which I have not.  As for me, I have done with this subject at once and forever.  Even to you, my mother, I can not delegate my choice of a wife.”

“I will never receive Harriet Hunsden!” Lady Kingsland passionately cried.

“Perhaps you will never have the opportunity.  She may prefer to become mistress of Strathmore Castle.  Lord Ernest is her most devoted adorer.  I have not asked her yet.  The chances are a thousand to one she will refuse when I do.”

His mother laughed scornfully, but her eyes were ablaze.

“You mean to ask her, then?”

“Most assuredly.”

She laughed again—­a bitter, mirthless laugh.

“We go fast, my friend!  And you have hardly known this divinity four-and-twenty hours.”

“Love is not a plant of slow growth.  Like Jonah’s gourd, it springs up, fully matured, in an hour.”

“Does it?  My son is better versed in amatory floriculture than I am.  But before you ask Miss Hunsden to become Lady Kingsland, had you not better inquire who her mother was?”