said Lady Denby again. "What do you want me to say? That you
deserve her? No, thank you, I couldn't tell such an obvious fib. What
I'm going to say in the shape of congratulation is that she is much too
good for you."

"That is so," he said with a grim smile.

"You'll stay to dinner?" murmured Lady Eleanor. "You will stay, Yorke?"

"Yes," he said, bending down and kissing her--"yes, thanks. But I must
go and change my things. I'm awfully dirty and seedy."

She went with him to the door, as if she begrudged every moment that he
should be out of her sight, and still smiled after he had left her and
had got half-way down the Gardens. Then suddenly he stopped and looked
round him with a ghostly look.

And yet it was only thegrown almost grave and almost troubled. "As you say, men
don't go about as if they were dancing to music, as we women do, and
they don't sing as we do. And--and if Yorke is not boisterous--Why did
you say that?" she demanded, suddenly changing her tone and turning
upon Lady Denby anxiously and nearly angrily. "Do you think he looks
dissatisfied--as if--as if he were sorry?"

"My dear child, your love for that young fellow is softening your
brain," responded Lady Denby, quietly. "Of course, I have noticed
nothing. He is quiet; but I suppose most men who are on the brink of
matrimony are quiet. They hear the clanking of their chains as they are
being forged, and are thinking of the time when they will be riveted
upon them. No man really likes being married."

"There shall