"And he a clerk in the Post Office?"
"He isn't a clerk in the Post Office now."
"I don't quite see what he will be then. It appears that he has inherited nothing."
"My sister says nothing."
"Then what's the good of his title. There is nothing so pernicious in the world as a pauper aristocracy. A clerk in the Post Office is entitled to have a wife, but a poor nobleman should at any rate let his poverty die with himself."
This was a view of the case which had not hitherto presented itself to Lady Kingsbury. When she suggested to him that the young nobleman should be asked down to Trafford, he did not seem to see that it was at all necessary. It would be much better that Fanny should come back. The young nobleman would, he supposed, live in his own country;—unless, indeed, the whole tale was a cock-and-bull story made up by Persiflage at the Foreign Office. It was just the sort of thing, he said, that Persiflage would do. He had said not a word as to carving an income out of the property for the young noble couple when she left him.
CHAPTER III.
ALL THE WORLD KNOWS IT.
The story was in truth all over London and half over England by the time that Lady Frances had returned to Hendon Hall. Though Vivian had made a Foreign Office secret of the affair at Gorse Hall, nevertheless it had been so commonly talked about during the last Sunday there, that Hautboy had told it all to poor Walker and to the Walker ladies. "By Jove, fancy!" Hautboy had said, "to go at once from a Post Office clerk to a duke! It's like some of those stories where a man goes to bed as a beggar and gets up as a prince. I wonder whether he likes it." Hampstead had of course discussed the matter very freely with his sister, still expressing an opinion that a man could not do other than take his father's name and his father's title. Lady Frances having thus become used to the subject was not surprised to find the following letter from her friend Lady Amaldina when she reached her home:—