‘Certainly,’ said the Duke.  ’But you should make up your mind first whether the thing is worth doing.’

‘Just so,’ said Popplecourt.  ’And as grouse and deer together are about the best things out, most of us made up our minds that it was worth doing.  But that fellow Tregear would argue it out.  He said a gentleman oughtn’t to play billiards as well as a marker.’

‘I think he was right,’ said the Duke.

‘Do you know Mr Tregear, Duke?’

‘I have met him—­with my son.’

‘Do you like him?’

‘I have seen very little of him.’

’I cannot say I do.  He thinks so much of himself.  Of course he is very intimate with Silverbridge, and that is all that anyone knows of him.’  The Duke bowed almost haughtily, though why he bowed he could hardly have explained to himself.  Lady Cantrip bit her lips in disgust.  ‘He’s just the fellow,’ continued Popplecourt, ’to think that some princess has fallen in love with him.’  Then the Duke left the room.

‘You had better not talk to him about Mr Tregear,’ said Lady Cantrip.

‘Why not?’

’I don’t know whether he approves of the intimacy between him and Lord Silverbridge.’

’I should think not;—­a man without any position or a shilling in the world.’

’The Duke is peculiar.  If a subject is distasteful to him he does not like it to be mentioned.  You had better not mention Mr Tregear,’ Lady Cantrip as she said this blushed inwardly at her own hypocrisy.

It was of course contrived at dinner that Lord Popplecourt should take out Lady Mary.  It is impossible to discover how such things get wind, but there was already an idea prevalent at Custins that Lord Popplecourt had matrimonial views, and that these views were looked upon favourably.  ‘You may be quite sure of it, Mr Lupton,’ Lady Adelaide FitzHoward had said.  ’I’ll make a bet they’re married before this time next year.’

‘It will be a terrible case of Beauty and the Beast,’ said Lupton.

Lady Chiltern had whispered a suspicion of the same kind, and had expressed a hope that the lover would be worthy of the girl.  And Dolly Longstaff had chaffed his friend Popplecourt on the subject, Popplecourt having laid himself open by indiscreet allusions to Dolly’s love for Miss Boncassen.  ’Everybody can’t have it as easily arranged for him as you,—­a Duke’s daughter and a pot of money without so much as the trouble of asking for it!’

‘What do you know about the Duke’s children?’

‘That’s what it is to be a lord and not to have a father.’  Popplecourt tried to show that he was disgusted; but he felt himself all the more strongly bound to go on with the project.

It was therefore a matter of course that these should-be lovers would be sent out of the room together.  ’You’ll give your arm to Mary,’ Lady Cantrip said, dropping the ceremonial prefix.  Lady Mary of course went out as she was bidden.  Though everybody else knew it, no idea of what was intended had yet come across her mind.