“Ah!” Mrs. Lovell musically drew him on.  “Was she dark, too?”

“No, she’s fair.  At least, she is in her portrait.”

“Brown hair; hazel eyes?”

“Oh—­oh!  You guess, do you?”

“I guess nothing, though it seems profitable.  That Yankee betting man ‘guesses,’ and what heaps of money he makes by it!”

“I wish I did,” Algernon sighed.  “All my guessing and reckoning goes wrong.  I’m safe for next Spring, that’s one comfort.  I shall make twenty thousand next Spring.”

“On Templemore?”

“That’s the horse.  I’ve got a little on Tenpenny Nail as well.  But I’m quite safe on Templemore; unless the Evil Principle comes into the field.”

“Is he so sure to be against you, if he does appear?” said Mrs. Lovell.

“Certain!” ejaculated Algernon, in honest indignation.

“Well, Algy, I don’t like to have him on my side.  Perhaps I will take a share in your luck, to make it—? to make it?”—­She played prettily as a mistress teasing her lap-dog to jump for a morsel; adding:  “Oh!  Algy, you are not a Frenchman.  To make it divine, sir! you have missed your chance.”

“There’s one chance I shouldn’t like to miss,” said the youth.

“Then, do not mention it,” she counselled him.  “And, seriously, I will take a part of your risk.  I fear I am lucky, which is ruinous.  We will settle that, by-and-by.  Do you know, Algy, the most expensive position in the world is a widow’s.”

“You needn’t be one very long,” growled he.

“I’m so wretchedly fastidious, don’t you see?  And it’s best not to sigh when we’re talking of business, if you’ll take me for a guide.  So, the old man brought this pretty rustic Miss Rhoda to the Bank?”

“Once,” said Algernon.  “Just as he did with her sister.  He’s proud of his nieces; shows them and then hides them.  The fellows at the Bank never saw her again.”

“Her name is—?”

“Dahlia.”

“Ah, yes!—­Dahlia.  Extremely pretty.  There are brown dahlias—­dahlias of all colours.  And the portrait of this fair creature hangs up in your chambers in town?”

“Don’t call them my chambers,” Algernon protested.

“Your cousin’s, if you like.  Probably Edward happened to be at the Bank when fair Dahlia paid her visit.  Once seems to have been enough for both of you.”

Algernon was unread in the hearts of women, and imagined that Edward’s defection from Mrs. Lovell’s sway had deprived him of the lady’s sympathy and interest in his fortunes.

“Poor old Ned’s in some scrape, I think,” he said.

“Where is he?” the lady asked, languidly.

“Paris.”

“Paris?  How very odd!  And out of the season, in this hot weather.  It’s enough to lead me to dream that he has gone over—­one cannot realize why.”

“Upon my honour!” Algernon thumped on his knee; “by jingo!” he adopted a less compromising interjection; “Ned’s fool enough.  My idea is, he’s gone and got married.”