“Were I,” said she, “twenty years younger, I think I would marry you, to cure my infatuation.”

“Then let me tell you in advance, madam,” said he, “that I will do everything to obtain a new lease of it, except divorce you.”

They were infinitely wittier, but so much was heard and may be reported.

“It makes the business of choosing a wife for him superhumanly difficult!” Mrs. Mountstuart observed, after listening to the praises she had set going again when the ladies were weeded of us, in Lady Patterne’s Indian room, and could converse unhampered upon their own ethereal themes.

“Willoughby will choose a wife for himself,” said his mother.

CHAPTER III

CONSTANTIA DURHAM

The great question for the county was debated in many households, daughter-thronged and daughterless, long subsequent to the memorable day of Willoughby’s coming of age.  Lady Busshe was for Constantia Durham.  She laughed at Mrs Mountstuart Jenkinson’s notion of Laetitia Dale.  She was a little older than Mrs. Mountstuart, and had known Willoughby’s father, whose marriage into the wealthiest branch of the Whitford family had been strictly sagacious.  “Patternes marry money; they are not romantic people,” she said.  Miss Durham had money, and she had health and beauty:  three mighty qualifications for a Patterne bride.  Her father, Sir John Durham, was a large landowner in the western division of the county; a pompous gentleman, the picture of a father-in-law for Willoughby.  The father of Miss Dale was a battered army surgeon from India, tenant of one of Sir Willoughby’s cottages bordering Patterne Park.  His girl was portionless and a poetess.  Her writing of the song in celebration of the young baronet’s birthday was thought a clever venture, bold as only your timid creatures can be bold.  She let the cat out of her bag of verse before the multitude; she almost proposed to her hero in her rhymes.  She was pretty; her eyelashes were long and dark, her eyes dark-blue, and her soul was ready to shoot like a rocket out of them at a look from Willoughby.  And he looked, he certainly looked, though he did not dance with her once that night, and danced repeatedly with Miss Durham.  He gave Laetitia to Vernon Whitford for the final dance of the night, and he may have looked at her so much in pity of an elegant girl allied to such a partner.  The “Phoebus Apollo turned fasting friar” had entirely forgotten his musical gifts in motion.  He crossed himself and crossed his bewildered lady, and crossed everybody in the figure, extorting shouts of cordial laughter from his cousin Willoughby.  Be it said that the hour was four in the morning, when dancers must laugh at somebody, if only to refresh their feet, and the wit of the hour administers to the wildest laughter.  Vernon was likened to Theseus in the maze, entirely dependent upon his Ariadne; to a fly released from