‘Did she?—­how good of her!’

’No; I forgot.  It—­it was I that said that; and she said—­what was it she said?  She said, that after all, beauty was but skin deep—­and that she valued you for your virtues and prudence rather than your good looks.’

‘Virtues and prudence!  She said I was prudent and virtuous?’

‘Yes.’

’And you talked of my beauty?  That was so kind of you.  You didn’t either of you say anything about other matters?’

‘What other matters?’

’Oh!  I don’t know.  Only some people are sometimes valued rather for what they’ve got than for any good qualities belonging to themselves intrinsically.’

’That can never be the case with Miss Dunstable; especially not at Courcy Castle,’ said Frank, bowing easily from the corner of the sofa over which he was leaning.

‘Of course not,’ said Miss Dunstable; and Frank at once perceived that she spoke in a tone of voice differing much from that half-bantering, half-good-humoured manner that was customary with her.  ’Of course not:  any such idea would be quite out of the question with Lady de Courcy.’  She paused for a moment, and then added in a tone different again, and unlike any that he had yet heard from her:—­’It is, at any rate, out of the question with Mr Frank Gresham—­of that I am quite sure.’

Frank ought to have understood her, and have appreciated the good opinion which she intended to convey; but he did not entirely do so.  He was hardly honest himself towards her; and he could not at first perceive that she intended to say that she thought him so.  He knew very well that she was alluding to her own huge fortune, and was alluding also to the fact that people of fashion sought her because of it; but he did not know that she intended to express a true acquittal as regarded him of any such baseness.

And did he deserve to be acquitted?  Yes, upon the whole he did;—­to be acquitted of that special sin.  His desire to make Miss Dunstable temporarily subject to his sway arose, not from a hankering after her fortune, but from an ambition to get the better of a contest in which other men around him seemed to be failing.

For it must not be imagined that, with such a prize to be struggled for, all others stood aloof and allowed him to have his own way with the heiress, undisputed.  The chance of a wife with two hundred thousand pounds is a godsend, which comes in a man’s life too seldom to be neglected, let that chance be never so remote.

Frank was the heir to a large embarrassed property; and, therefore, the heads of families, putting their wisdoms together, had thought it most meet that this daughter of Plutus should, if possible, fall to his lot.  But not so thought the Honourable George; and not so thought another gentleman who was at that time an inmate of Courcy Castle.

These suitors perhaps somewhat despised their young rival’s efforts.  It may be that they had sufficient worldly wisdom to know that so important a crisis of life is not settled among quips and jokes, and that Frank was too much in jest to be in earnest.  But be that as it may, his love-making did not stand in the way of their love-making; nor his hopes, if he had any, in the way of their hopes.