They occurred, however, to Hilary.  It occurred to him that Peter would now require all his slender earnings for himself and wife, which was awkward; also that Peter really needn’t have looked down to the lower middle classes for a wife.  Hilary believed in gentle birth; through all his vicissitudes a pathetic pride of breeding clung to him.  One might be down at heels; one might be reduced to sordid means of livelihood, even to shady schemes for enlarging one’s income; but once a gentleman always so, and one was not to be ranked with the bounders, the Vyvians, the wealthy Leslies even.

Hilary looked resigned and weary.  Why should Peter want to marry a commonplace and penniless little nobody, and not so very pretty either, though she looked nice and bright when she was animated, as now.

“Well,” he said, “when is it to be?”

Peter looked across at Rhoda.

“I should hope very soon,” he said.  It was obviously safer, and safety was the object, to have it very soon.

“How soon can one get married?  There have to be banns and so on, don’t there?  The third time of asking—­that brings it to the eighteenth of December.  What about the nineteenth, Rhoda?  That’s a Monday.”

“Really, Peter ...”  Rhoda blushed more than ever.  “That seems awfully soon.”

“Well,” said Peter, blind to the unusualness of such a discussion at the dinner-table, “the sooner the better, don’t you think?  There’s nothing to wait for.  I don’t suppose we shall ever have more money to do it on than we have now.  I know of a man who waited years and years because he thought he hadn’t got quite enough, and he got a little more each year, and at the end of six years he thought to double his fortune by putting it all on a winner, because he was getting so impatient.  And the horse came in last.  So the girl broke it off and married someone else, and the man’s heart broke and he took to drink.”

“Well?” enquired Miss Matthews, who thought Peter habitually irrelevant in his remarks.

“Well—­so let’s be married on December the nineteenth.”

“I’m sure,” said Rhoda, “we’re quite embarrassing everybody, being so public.  Let’s settle it afterwards, Peter, when we’re alone.”

But she too meant to have it as soon as might be after the third time of asking; it was safer, much safer, so.

“Well,” said Miss Clegson, as the ladies rose from the table, “now we’re going to carry Miss Johnson away to tell us all about it; and we’ll leave Mr. Peter to tell you gentlemen his secrets.  And after that we’ll have a good round game; but two of the present company can be left out if they like better to sit in the window-seat!”

But when the other gentlemen repaired to the drawing-room for the good round game, Peter stayed behind, with Hilary.  He didn’t want to talk or be talked to, only to stay where he was and not to have to sit in the window-seat.