He bowed.  “Thank you!” And stroking his moustache, as was his constant habit, he smiled again.  “You are really very cruel to me, Maryllia!  Why can I never win your confidence—­I will not say your affection?  May I not know?”

“You may!”—­she answered coldly—­“It is because there is nothing in you to trust and nothing to value.  I have told you this so often that I wonder you want to be told it again!  And though I give you permission to call on me at my own home,—­just to save you the trouble of telling Aunt Emily that her ‘eccentric’ niece was too ‘peculiar’ to admit you there,—­I reserve to myself the right at any moment to shut the door against you.”

She moved from him then, and seeing the Ittlethwaites of Ittlethwaite Park, went to speak to them.  He stood where she had left him, surveying the garden in front of him with absolute complacency.  Mr. Marius Longford joined him.

“Well?” said the light of the Savage and Savile tentatively.

“Well!  She is the same ungovernable termagant as ever—­conceited little puss!  But she always amuses me—­that’s one consolation!” He laughed, and taking out his cigar-case, opened it.  “Will you have one?” Longford accepted the favour.  “Who is this old fellow, Pippitt?” he asked—­“Any relation of the dead and gone Badsworth?  How does he get Badsworth Hall?  Doesn’t he grind bones to make his bread, or something of that kind?”

Longford explained with civil obsequiousness that Sir Morton Pippitt had certainly once ‘ground bones,’ but that he had ‘retired’ from such active service, while still retaining the largest share in the bone business.  That he had bought Badsworth Hall as it stood,—­ pictures, books, furniture and all, for what was to him a mere trifle; and that he was now assuming to himself by lawful purchase, the glory of the whole deceased Badsworth family.

Lord Roxmouth shrugged his shoulders in contempt.

“Such will be the fate of Roxmouth Castle!” he said—­“Some grinder of bones or maker of beer will purchase it, and perhaps point out the picture of the founder of the house as being that of a former pot-boy!”

“The old order changeth,”—­said Longford, with a chill smile—­“And I suppose we should learn to accustom ourselves to it.  But you, with your position and good looks, should be able to prevent any such possibility as you suggest.  Miss Vancourt is not the only woman in the world.”

“By no means,”—­and Roxmouth strolled into the garden, Longford walking beside him—­“But she is the only woman I at present know, who, if she obeys her aunt’s wishes, will have a fortune of several millions.  And just because such a little devil should be mastered and must be mastered, I have resolved to master her.  That’s all!”

“And, to your mind, sufficient,”—­said Longford—­“But if it is a question of the millions chiefly, there is always the aunt herself.”

Roxmouth stared—­then laughed.