'"But it won't make any difference," said I decidedly. "We can't be unmarried again, however we may wish it, I know; for mamma told me so."
'"Well, I didn't say I wished to be unmarried, did I?" demanded my bridegroom not very graciously, and colouring very much as he spoke.
'"Oh no," I said, feeling guiltily conscious of what Agnes had told me. "And I daresay we shall like it very much when we are grown-up."
'"Of course," replied Algernon. "And in the meantime it does not much matter, because I don't suppose we shall see each other very often."
'"Oliver thought you would come here and stay with us sometimes," I remarked. "He is always wishing for a boy of his own age for a companion, because Miles and Roger are so little."
'"Ah! I should like that," said Algernon, who evidently regarded a brother-in-law as a much more interesting and valuable acquisition than a wife. "But Sir Harry told me a little while ago that he was going to present me at court as soon as Parliament met, and that it had already been settled that I should be appointed one of the Duchess of York's pages."
'"Oh," said I, rather struck by this piece of intelligence. "Shall you like that? what will you have to do?"
'"I don't know exactly; but there are a great many pages—boys of my own age; so it is sure to be better than New Court at any rate, where there is no one at all to talk to when Agnes is away. And she is only a girl, after all."
'This remark was so exactly what Oliver would have made under similar circumstances, that I did not feel offended, and only asked whether Agnes always came to New Court in her holidays.
'"Yes; she has nowhere else to go. Her father and mother are dead, and Sir Harry is her guardian; and he promised her father that she should never be made a Roman Catholic; so that is why he sends her to school at Madame St. Aubert's. You know"—and Algernon lowered his voice to a mysterious whisper—"Lady Mountfort is a Papist, and she is always trying to convert people."