’Jolly difficult for those that are mixed up with the press to keep an oath of secrecy!’ Logan spoke as a press man.

’We shall only have to do with gentlemen and ladies.  The oath is not going to sanction itself with religious terrors.  Good form—­we shall appeal to a “sense of form”—­now so widely diffused by University Extension Lectures on the Beautiful, the Fitting, the—­’

‘Oh shut up!’ cried Logan.  ’You always haver after midnight.  For, look here, here is an objection; this precious plan of yours, parents and others could work it for themselves.  I dare say they do.  When they see the affections of a son, or a daughter, or a bereaved father beginning to stray towards A., they probably invite B. to come and stay and act as a lightning conductor.  They don’t need us.’

’Oh, don’t they?  They seldom have an eligible and satisfactory lightning conductor at hand, somebody to whom they can trust their dear one.  Or, if they have, the dear one has already been bored with the intended lightning conductor (who is old, or plain, or stupid, or familiar, at best), and they won’t look at him or her.  Now our Disentanglers are not going to be plain, or dull, or old, or stale, or commonplace—­we’ll take care of that.  My dear fellow, don’t you know how dismal the parti selected for a man or girl invariably is?  Now we provide a different and superior article, a fresh article too, not a familiar bore or a neighbour.’

‘Well, there is a good deal in that, as you say,’ Logan admitted.  ’But decent people will think the whole speculation shady.  How are you to get round that?  There is something you have forgotten.’

‘What?’ Merton asked.

’Why it stares you in the face.  References.  Unexceptionable references; people will expect them all round.’

’Please don’t say “unexceptionable”; say “references beyond the reach of cavil."’ Merton was a purist.  ’It costs more in advertisements, but my phrase at once enlists the sympathy of every liberal and elegant mind.  But as to references (and I am glad that you have some common sense, Logan), there is, let me see, there is the Dowager.’

‘The divine Althaea—­Marchioness of Bowton?’

‘The same,’ said Merton.  ’The oldest woman, and the most recklessly up-to-date in London.  She has seen bien d’autres, and wants to see more.’

‘She will do; and my aunt,’ Logan said.

‘Not, oh, of course not, the one who left her money to the Armenians?’ Merton asked.

’No, another.  And there’s old Lochmaben’s young wife, my cousin, widely removed, by marriage.  She is American, you know, and perhaps you know her book, Social Experiments?’

‘Yes, it is not half bad,’ Merton conceded, ’and her heart will be in what I fear she will call “the new departure.”  And she is pretty, and highly respected in the parish.’

’And there’s my aunt I spoke of, or great aunt, Miss Nicky Maxwell.  The best old thing:  a beautiful monument of old gentility, and she would give her left hand to help any one of the clan.’