“Ah, you will!” says Mrs. Bethune, with her queer smile.

“The fact is, Margaret,” says Lady Rylton, with some agitation, “that if Maurice doesn’t marry this girl, there—­there will be an end of us all.  He must marry her.”

“But he doesn’t love—­he barely knows her—­and a marriage without love——­”

“Is the safest thing known.”

“Under given circumstances!  I grant you that if two people well on in life, old enough to know their own minds, and what they are doing, were to marry, it might be different.  They might risk a few years of mere friendship together, and be glad of the venture later on.  But for two young people to set out on life’s journey with nothing to steer by—­that would be madness!”

“Ah! yes.  Margaret speaks like a book,” says Mrs. Bethune, with an amused air; “Maurice, you see, is so young, so inexperienced——­”

“At all events, Tita is only a child.”

“Tita!  Is that her name?”

“A pet name, I fancy.  Short for Titania; she is such a little thing.”

“Titania—­Queen of the Fairies; I wonder if the original Titania’s father dealt in buttons!  Is it buttons, or soap, or tar?  You didn’t say,” says Mrs. Bethune, turning to Lady Rylton.

“I really don’t know—­and as it has to be trade, I can’t see that it matters,” says Lady Rylton, frowning.

“Nothing matters, if you come to think of it,” says Mrs. Bethune.  “Go on, Margaret—­you were in the middle of a sermon; I dare say we shall endure to the end.”

“I was saying that Miss Bolton is only a child.”

“She is seventeen.  She told us about it last night at dinner.  Gave us month and day.  It was very clever of her.  We ought to give her birthday-gifts, don’t you think?  And yet you call her a child!”

“At seventeen, what else?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Margaret,” says Lady Rylton pettishly; “and, above all things, don’t be old-fashioned.  There is no such product nowadays as a child of seventeen.  There isn’t time for it.  It has gone out!  The idea is entirely exploded.  Perhaps there were children aged seventeen long ago—­one reads of them, I admit, but it is too long ago for one to remember.  Why, I was only eighteen when I married your uncle.”

“Pour uncle!” says Mrs. Bethune; her tone is full of feeling.

Lady Rylton accepts the feeling as grief for the uncle’s death; but Margaret, casting a swift glance at Mrs. Bethune, wonders if it was meant for grief for the uncle’s life—­with Lady Rylton.

“He was the ugliest man I ever saw, without exception,” says Lady Rylton placidly; “and I was never for a moment blind to the fact, but he was well off at that time, and, of course, I married him.  I wasn’t in love with him.”  She pauses, and makes a little apologetic gesture with her fan and shoulders.  “Horrid expression, isn’t it?” says she.  “In love!  So terribly bourgeois.  It ought to be done away with.  However, to go on, you see how admirably my marriage turned out.  Not a hitch anywhere.  Your poor dear uncle and I never had a quarrel.  I had only to express a wish, and it was gratified.”