“Oh, undoubtedly.  The style, I mean.  Tolerably antique?”

“Novel, I should say, and not the worse for that.  We want plain practical dealings between men and women.  Usually we go the wrong way to work.  And I loathe sentimental rubbish.”

De Craye hummed an air.  “But the lady?” said he.

“I told you, there seems a likelihood of her consenting.”

Willoughby’s fish gave a perceptible little leap now that he had been taught to exercise his aptitude for guessing.

“Without any of the customary preliminaries on the side of the gentleman?” he said.

“We must put him through his paces, friend Horace.  He’s a notorious blunderer with women; hasn’t a word for them, never marked a conquest.”

De Craye crested his plumes under the agreeable banter.  He presented a face humourously sceptical.

“The lady is positively not indisposed to give the poor fellow a hearing?”

“I have cause to think she is not,” said Willoughby, glad of acting the indifference to her which could talk of her inclinations.

“Cause?”

“Good cause.”

“Bless us!”

“As good as one can have with a woman.”

“Ah?”

“I assure you.”

“Ah!  Does it seem like her, though?”

“Well, she wouldn’t engage herself to accept him.”

“Well, that seems more like her.”

“But she said she could engage to marry no one else.”

The colonel sprang up, crying:  “Clara Middleton said it?” He curbed himself “That’s a bit of wonderful compliancy.”

“She wishes to please me.  We separate on those terms.  And I wish her happiness.  I’ve developed a heart lately and taken to think of others.”

“Nothing better.  You appear to make cock sure of the other party—­our friend?”

“You know him too well, Horace, to doubt his readiness.”

“Do you, Willoughby?”

“She has money and good looks.  Yes, I can say I do.”

“It wouldn’t be much of a man who’d want hard pulling to that lighted altar!”

“And if he requires persuasion, you and I, Horace, might bring him to his senses.”

“Kicking, ’t would be!”

“I like to see everybody happy about me,” said Willoughby, naming the hour as time to dress for dinner.

The sentiment he had delivered was De Craye’s excuse for grasping his hand and complimenting him; but the colonel betrayed himself by doing it with an extreme fervour almost tremulous.

“When shall we hear more?” he said.

“Oh, probably to-morrow,” said Willoughby.  “Don’t be in such a hurry.”

“I’m an infant asleep!” the colonel replied, departing.

He resembled one, to Willoughby’s mind:  or a traitor drugged.

“There is a fellow I thought had some brains!”

Who are not fools to beset spinning if we choose to whip them with their vanity! it is the consolation of the great to watch them spin.  But the pleasure is loftier, and may comfort our unmerited misfortune for a while, in making a false friend drunk.