Old Tom tugged once or twice at his imprisoned fist, while these youthful frolics of his too stupid self and the wild and beautiful Miss Bonner were being recalled.

‘I remember!’ he said savagely, and reaching the door hurled out:  ’And I remember the Bull-dogs, too! servant, my lady.’  With which he effected a retreat, to avoid a ringing laugh he heard in his ears.

Lady Jocelyn had not laughed.  She had done no more than look and smile kindly on the old boy.  It was at the Bull-dogs, a fall of water on the borders of the park, that Tom Cogglesby, then a hearty young man, had been guilty of his folly:  had mistaken her frank friendliness for a return of his passion, and his stubborn vanity still attributed her rejection of his suit to the fact of his descent from a cobbler, or, as he put it, to her infernal worship of rank.

‘Poor old Tom!’ said her ladyship, when alone.  ’He ’s rough at the rind, but sound at the core.’  She had no idea of the long revenge Old Tom cherished, and had just shaped into a plot to be equal with her for the Bull-dogs.

CHAPTER XXIX

PRELUDE TO AN ENGAGEMENT

Money was a strong point with the Elburne brood.  The Jocelyns very properly respected blood; but being, as Harry, their youngest representative, termed them, poor as rats, they were justified in considering it a marketable stuff; and when they married they married for money.  The Hon. Miss Jocelyn had espoused a manufacturer, who failed in his contract, and deserved his death.  The diplomatist, Melville, had not stepped aside from the family traditions in his alliance with Miss Black, the daughter of a bold bankrupt, educated in affluence; and if he touched nothing but L5000 and some very pretty ringlets, that was not his fault.  Sir Franks, too, mixed his pure stream with gold.  As yet, however, the gold had done little more than shine on him; and, belonging to expectancy, it might be thought unsubstantial.  Beckley Court was in the hands of Mrs. Bonner, who, with the highest sense of duty toward her only living child, was the last to appreciate Lady Jocelyn’s entire absence of demonstrative affection, and severely reprobated her daughter’s philosophic handling of certain serious subjects.  Sir Franks, no doubt, came better off than the others; her ladyship brought him twenty thousand pounds, and Harry had ten in the past tense, and Rose ten in the future; but living, as he had done, a score of years anticipating the demise of an incurable invalid, he, though an excellent husband and father, could scarcely be taught to imagine that the Jocelyn object of his bargain was attained.  He had the semblance of wealth, without the personal glow which absolute possession brings.  It was his habit to call himself a poor man, and it was his dream that Rose should marry a rich one.  Harry was hopeless.  He had been his Grandmother’s pet up to the years of adolescence:  he was getting