“Your lordship proposes the fortune not as the first object of my affection, but merely as a corollary.  But, perhaps, it will be as well that you should finish your proposition, before I make any remarks on the subject.”  And Lord Kilcullen, sat down, with a well-feigned look of listless indifference.

“Well, Kilcullen, I have latterly been thinking much about you, and so has your poor mother.  She is very uneasy that you should still—­still be unmarried; and Jervis has written to me very strongly.  You see it is quite necessary that something should be done—­or we shall both be ruined.  Now, if I did raise this sum—­and I really could not do it—­I don’t think I could manage it, just at present; but, even if I did, it would only be encouraging you to go on just in the same way again.  Now, if you were to marry, your whole course of life would be altered, and you would become, at the same time, more respectable and more happy.”

“That would depend a good deal upon circumstances, I should think.”

“Oh!  I am sure you would.  You are just the same sort of fellow I was when at your age, and I was much happier after I was married, so I know it.  Now, you see, your cousin has a hundred thousand pounds; in fact something more than that.”

“What?—­Fanny!  Poor Ballindine!  So that’s the way with him is it!  When I was contradicting the rumour of his marriage with Fanny, I little thought that I was to be his rival!  At any rate, I shall have to shoot him first.”

“You might, at any rate, confine yourself to sense, Lord Kilcullen, when I am taking so much pains to talk sensibly to you, on a subject which, I presume, cannot but interest you.”

“Indeed, my lord, I’m all attention; and I do intend to talk sensibly when I say that I think you are proposing to treat Ballindine very ill.  The world will think well of your turning him adrift on the score of the match being an imprudent one; but it won’t speak so leniently of you if you expel him, as soon as your ward becomes an heiress, to make way for your own son.”

“You know that I’m not thinking of doing so.  I’ve long seen that Lord Ballindine would not make a fitting husband for Fanny—­long before Harry died.”

“And you think that I shall?”

“Indeed I do.  I think she will be lucky to get you.”

“I’m flattered into silence:  pray go on.”

“You will be an earl—­a peer—­and a man of property.  What would she become if she married Lord Ballindine?”

“Oh, you are quite right!  Go on.  I wonder it never occurred to her before to set her cap at me.”

“Now do be serious.  I wonder how you can joke on such a subject, with all your debts.  I’m sure I feel them heavy enough, if you don’t.  You see Lord Ballindine was refused—­I may say he was refused—­before we heard about that poor boy’s unfortunate death.  It was the very morning we heard of it, three or four hours before the messenger came, that Fanny had expressed her resolution to declare it off, and commissioned me to tell him so.  And, therefore, of course, the two things can’t have the remotest reference to each other.”