“That is very well,” I said, “to speak now of better prospects for Dolly.  But you will do me the honour of remembering, my dear Cousin, that in this very room once you spoke to me very differently.  If you have changed your mind, you might at least have told me so; for I have not changed mine at all; and Dolly, it seems, is come round to my way of thinking at last.”

“But how did you do it?” asked he, stopping in his walk.

“I lost my temper altogether,” said I; “and that is a very good way if you have tried all the rest.”

“But the King, man, the King!  How did you get that paper out of him?  Why His Majesty himself, I am told, took particular notice—­”

“Eh?” said I.

“That is no matter now,” he said.  “What were you going to say?”

“I must have that first,” said I.

Tom began to pace the floor again.

“It is nothing at all, Cousin.  It is that His Majesty spoke very kindly to my daughter upon her first coming to Court.”

“I am glad I did not know that,” I said, “or I might have said more to him.”

“Well; but what did you say?”

Now I was in half a dozen minds as to what I should tell him.  He knew for certain nothing at all of my comings and goings and of what I did for the King; yet I thought that he must have guessed a good deal.  I judged it safer, therefore, to tell him a little, to stop his month; but not too much.

“Why,” I said very carefully, “I have been of a little service to the King; and His Majesty was good enough to ask me if there were any little favour he could do me.  So that is what I asked him.”

Tom stopped in his pacing again:  and it was then that I entreated him to sit down and talk like a Christian.  He did so, without a word.

“In France, I suppose?” he said immediately after.

“Why, yes.”

Tom looked at me again.

“And you travel with four men now, instead of one.”

“I find it more convenient,” I said.

“And more expensive too,” he observed.

“Why, yes:  a little more expensive, too,” I answered.  But I was a shade uneasy; because this increase of servants was at His Majesty’s desire and cost.  I made haste to turn the conversation back once more.  I did not wish Tom to think that I was of any importance at all.

“Well; but what of Dolly?” I said.

It was then that my Cousin suddenly came down from his loftiness.  He seemed to awake out of a little reverie.

“You come into the enjoyment of your property,” he said, “in four years from now?”

“In less than that,” I said.  “It is three years and a half.  My birthday is in June.”

He asked me one or two more questions then as to its amount, and what arrangements I would make in the event of my marriage.  When I had satisfied him upon these matters, he fell again into a reverie.

“Well?” said I, a little sharply.