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trifle breathlessly: "Cardross, what a very elegant dressing-gown that is! I think I never saw you wear it before."
    "Ah, I hoped you would be pleased with it!" he replied blandly. "And with me for letting you see it."
    "How absurd you are! It is certainly most handsome."
    "Yes, and wickedly dear—as dear as your feathered bonnet, though not, I fear, as becoming. You see how I lay myself open to strong counter-attack!"
    "Oh, Giles!"
    He laughed, and tickled her cheek. "Foolish little Nell! Is it very shocking?"
    She heaved a sigh of relief, smiling shyly at him. "No, indeed it isn't! Only it—it does chance to be a bill I had forgotten, and I was afraid you would be angry with me."
    "What a disagreeable husband I must be!" he murmured ruefully. "Shall I pay that bill with the rest?"
    "No, please! It is a very small one—look!"
    She held it out to him, but he did not look at it, only taking her hand in his, the bill crushed between his fingers, and saying: "You mustn't be afraid of me. I never meant to make you so! I'll pay this bill, or any other—only don't conceal any from me!"
    "Afraid of you? Oh, no, no!" she exclaimed.
    His clasp on her hand tightened; he leaned forward, as though he would have kissed her; but her dresser came into the room just then, and although she quickly withdrew, the moment had passed. Nell had snatched her hand away, vividly blushing, and the Earl did not try to recapture it. He got up, his own complexion rather heightened, feeling all the embarrassment natural to a man discovered, at ten o'clock in the morning, making love to his own wife, and went away to his dressing-room.
     
     
    CHAPTER TWO
     
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    Shortly before four o'clock that afternoon young Lady Cardross's barouche was driven into Hyde Park by the Stanhope Gate. It was a very stylish vehicle, quite the latest thing in town carriages, and it had been bestowed on her ladyship, together with the pair of perfectly matched grays that drew it, by her husband, upon her installation as mistress of his house in Grosvenor Square. "Slap up to the echo," was what Dysart called it: certainly no other lady owned a more elegant turn-out. To be seen in Hyde Park between the hours of five and six on any fine afternoon during the London season, driving, riding, or even walking, was de rigueur for anyone of high fashion; and before her marriage, when she had sat beside her mama in an oldfashioned landaulet, Nell had frequently envied the possessors of more dashing equipages, and had thought how agreeable it would be to sit behind a pair of high-steppers in a smart barouche, with its wheels picked out in yellow. She had been delighted with the Earl's gift, exclaiming naively: "Now I shall be all the crack!"
    "Do you wish to be?" he had asked her, amused. "Yes," she replied honestly. "And I think I ought to be, because although Miss Wilby—our governess, you know says that it is wrong to set one's mind on worldly things, you are all the crack, which makes it perfectly proper, I think, for me to be fashionable too."
    "I am persuaded," he said, his countenance admirably composed, "that Miss Wilby must perceive it to be your duty, even."
    She was a little dubious about this, but happily recollecting that she was no longer answerable to her governess she was able to put that excellent educationist out of her mind. "You know how people talk of Lord Dorset on his white horse, and Mrs. Toddington with her chestnuts?" she said confidentially. "Now they will talk of Lady Cardross, behind her match-grays! I should not be astonished if my barouche were to draw as many eyes as hers!"
    "Nor should I," agreed his lordship, grave as a judge. "In fact, I should be much astonished if it did not."
    Whether it was the smart turn-out which drew all eyes, or its charming occupant, Nell had soon experienced the felicity of attracting a great deal of attention when she drove in the Park. She became a noted figure, and never doubted that she