’No, I don’t think.  I don’t think anything except that you are very ill-natured.’  Then he got up and, after making formal adieux to both the ladies, left the house.

As soon as he was gone Lady Mabel began to laugh, but the least apprehensive ears would have perceived that the laughter was affected.  Miss Cassewary did not laugh at all, but sat bolt upright and looked very serious.  ‘Upon my honour,’ said the younger lady, ’he is the most beautifully simple-minded human being I ever knew in my life.’

‘Then I wouldn’t laugh at him.’

‘How can one help it?  But of course I do it with a purpose.’

‘What purpose?’

’I think he is making a fool of himself.  If somebody does not interfere he will go so far that he will not be able to draw back without misbehaving.’

‘I thought,’ said Miss Cassewary, in a very low voice, almost whispering.  ‘I thought that he was looking for a wife elsewhere.’

‘You need not think of it again,’ said Lady Mab, jumping up from her seat.  ’I had thought of it too.  But as I told you before, I spared him.  He did not really mean it with me;—­nor does he mean it with this American girl.  Such young men seldom mean.  They drift into matrimony.  But she will not spare him.  It would be a national triumph.  All the States would sing a paean of glory.  Fancy a New York belle having compassed a Duke!’

‘I don’t think it possible.  It would be too horrid.’

’I think it is quite possible.  As for me, I could teach myself to think it best as it is, were I not so sure that I should be better for him than to many others.  But I shouldn’t love him.’

‘Why not love him?’

’He is such a boy.  I should always treat him like a boy,—­spoiling him and petting him, but never respecting him.  Don’t run away with any idea that I should refuse him from conscientious motives, if he were really to ask me.  I too should like to be a Duchess.  I should like to bring all this misery at home to an end.’

‘But you did refuse him.’

’Not exactly;—­because he never asked me.  For the moment I was weak, and so I let have another chance.  I shall not have been a good friend to him if it ends in his marrying this Yankee.’

Lord Silverbridge went out of the house in a very ill humour,—­ which however left him when in the course of the afternoon he found himself up at Maidenhead with Miss Boncassen.  Miss Boncassen at any rate did not laugh at him.  And then she was so pleasant, so full of common sense, and so completely intelligent!  ’I like you,’ she said, ’because I feel that you will not think that you ought to make love to me.  There is nothing I hate so much as the idea that a young man and a young woman can’t be acquainted with each other without some tomfoolery as that.’  This had exactly expressed his own feeling.  Nothing could be so pleasant as his intimacy with Isabel Boncassen.