“But she might be in love with somebody,” said the captain, in a surprised but humble tone.

“Love!  Bah!  Be in love, so that she may be shut up in an old barrack with de powders!” The way in which that word barrack was pronounced, and the middle letters sounded, almost lifted the captain off his seat.  “Love is very pretty at seventeen, when the imagination is telling a parcel of lies, and when life is one dream.  To like people—­oh, yes; to be very fond of your friend;—­oh, yes; to be most attached—­as I am to my Julie”—­here she got hold of Lady Ongar’s hand—­“it is the salt of life!  But what you call love, booing and cooing, with rhymes and verses about de moon, it is to go back to pap and panade, and what you call bibs.  No; if a woman wants a house, and de something to live on, let her marry a husband; or if a man want to have children, let him marry a wife.  But to be shut up in a country house, when everything you have got of your own—­I say it is bad”

Captain Clavering was heartily sorry that he had mentioned the fact of his sister-in-law being left at home at Clavering Park.  It was most unfortunate.  How could he make it understood that if he were married he would not think of shutting his wife up at Ongar Park?  “Lady Clavering, you know, does come to London generally,” he said.

“Bah!” exclaimed the little Franco-Pole.

“And as for me, I never should be happy, if I were married, unless I had my wife with me everywhere,” said Captain Clavering.

“Bah-ah-ah!” ejaculated the lady.

Captain Clavering could not endure this any longer.  He felt that the manner of the lady was, to say the least of it, unpleasant, and he perceived that he was doing no good to his own cause.  So he rose from his chair and muttered some words with the intention of showing his purpose of departure.

“Good-by, Captain Clavering,” said Lady Ongar.  “My love to my sister when you see her.”

Archie shook hands with her and then made his bow to Madam Gordeloup.  “Au revoir, my friend,” she said, “and you remember all I say.  It is not good for de wife to be alone in the country, while de husband walk about in the town and make an eye to every lady he see.”  Archie would not trust himself to renew the argument, but bowing again, made his way off.

“He was come for one admirer,” said Sophie, as soon as the door was closed.

“An admirer of whom?”

“Not of me; oh, no; I was not in danger at all.”

“Of me?  Captain Clavering!  Sophie, you get your head full of the strangest nonsense.”

“Ah; very well.  You see.  What will you give me if I am right?  Will you bet?  Why had he got on his new gloves, and had his head all smelling with stuff from de hair-dresser?  Does he come always perfumed like that?  Does he wear shiny little boots to walk about in de morning, and make an eye always?  Perhaps yes.”

“I never saw his boots or his eyes.”