Her own people

By Mrs. B. M. CROKER
Author of Diana Barrington, Beyond the Pale, Peggy of the Bartons, Terence, The Catspaw, etc.
London: Hurst and Blackett, Limited Paternoster House, E.C.
DEDICATION. TO EDITH M. VINCENT, WITH THE AUTHOR'S LOVE
God pardon me and give me rest.
Oh yes! I know what it is to be hard up myself! I'm hard up now!—but I'll help you in another way. You must marry, Malcolm, my boy! Leave it to me, and I'll find you a rich wife!
In making the foregoing boastful promise, Sir Horace Haig raised a naturally harsh voice, and all but shouted his officious announcement. The empty air seemed to echo the words, rich wife — rich wife, their regular measured tread to repeat, rich wife — rich wife, as the two men, uncle and nephew, hurried down a by-street in Homburg.
There was good reason for haste, a neighbouring clock was chiming the hour, and already they were unfashionably late for the morning ceremonies at the Elisabeth Brunnen.
But—— began the prospective Benedict, in a doubtful tone.
My grandfather used to say, interrupted his uncle, in a loud authoritative key, that a man should marry young, and marry often. He had four wives!
And you, sir, have not had one! rejoined his companion, with unexpected audacity.
Oh—ah—well, yes—that is true—but the fact is, I had an unhappy love affair—(a fiction invented on the spot)—a—a—blighted life—a blighted life!!—it is a—a painful subject.