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yourself that I make love charmingly!’ he murmured.
    It drew a smile from her, because she could never withstand that gleaming look, but she shook her head as well, and said: ‘For shame, Sylvester! Do you mean to sound like a coxcomb?’
    He laughed. ‘Of course I don’t! To be frank with you, there are not five but a dozen young women of rank and fashion who are perfectly ready to receive an offer from me. I’m not hard to swallow, you know, though I don’t doubt I have as many faults as a Mr. Smith or a Mr Jones. Mine are more palatable, however: scarcely noticeable for the rich marchpane that covers them!’
    ‘Do you wish for a wife who marries you for the sake of your possessions?’ the Duchess asked, arching her brows.
    ‘I don’t think I mind very much, provided we were mutually agreeable. Such a wife would be unlikely to enact me any tragedies, and anything of that nature, Mama, would lead to our being regularly parted within a twelvemonth. I couldn’t endure it!’
    ‘The enacting of tragedies, my son, is not an invariable concomitant of love-matches,’ she said dryly.
    ‘Who should know that better than I?’ he retorted, his smile embracing her. ‘But where am I to look for your counterpart, my dear? Show her to me, and I will engage to fall desperately in love with her, and marry her, fearing no after-ills!’
    ‘Sylvester, you are too absurd!’
    ‘Not as absurd as you think! Seriously, Mama, although I have seen some love-matches that have prospered, I have seen a great many that most certainly have not! Oh! no doubt some husbands and wives of my acquaintance would stare to hear me say I thought them anything but happy! Perhaps they enjoy jealousies, tantrums, quarrels, and stupid misunderstandings: I should not! The well-bred woman who marries me because she has a fancy to be a duchess will suit me very well, and will probably fill her position admirably.’ His eyes quizzed her. ‘Or would you like me to turn my coat inside out, and sally forth in humble disguise, like the prince in a fairy tale? I never thought much of that prince, you know! A chuckle-headed fellow, for how could he hope, masquerading as a mean person, to come near any but quite ineligible females whom it would have been impossible for him to marry?’
    ‘Very true!’ she replied.
    He was always watchful where she was concerned. It struck him now that she was suddenly looking tired; and he said with quick compunction: ‘I’ve fagged you to death with my nonsense! Now, why did you let me talk you into a headache? Shall I send Anna to you?’
    ‘No, indeed! My head doesn’t ache, I promise you,’ she said, smiling tenderly up at him.
    ‘I wish I might believe you!’ he said, bending over her to kiss her cheek. ‘I’ll leave you to rest before you are assailed by Augusta again: don’t let her plague you!’
    He went away, and she remained lost in her reflections until roused from them by her cousin’s return.
    ‘All alone, dear Elizabeth?’ Miss Penistone exclaimed. ‘Now, if I had but known—but in general I do believe Sylvester would stay with you for ever, if I were not obliged at last to come in! I am sure I have said a hundred times that I never knew such an attentive son. So considerate, too! There was never anything like it!’
    ‘Ah, yes!’ the Duchess said. ‘To me so considerate, so endlessly kind!’
    She sounded a little mournful, which was unusual in her. Miss Penistone, speaking much in the heartening tone Button used to divert Edmund when he was cross, said: ‘He was looking particularly handsome today, wasn’t he? Such an excellent figure, and his air so distinguished! What heartburnings there will be when at last he throws the handkerchief!’
    She laughed amiably at this thought, but the Duchess did not seem to be amused. She said nothing, but Miss Penistone saw her hands clasp and unclasp on the arm of her chair, and at once realized that no doubt she must be afraid that so rich a prize