"No," said Marion faintly, uttering her little protest ever so gently.
"You are very constant, my lord," said Mrs. Roden.
"I suppose a man is constant to what he really loves best. But what a history you have brought back with you, Mrs. Roden! I do not know whether I am to call you Mrs. Roden."
"Certainly, my lord, you are to call me so."
"What does it mean?" asked Marion.
"You have not heard," he said. "I have not been here time enough to tell her all this, Mrs. Roden."
"You know it then, Lord Hampstead?"
"Yes, I know it;—though Roden has not condescended to write me a line. What are we to call him?" To this Mrs. Roden made no answer on the spur of the moment. "Of course he has written to Fanny, and all the world knows it. It seems to have reached the Foreign Office first, and to have been sent down from thence to my people at Trafford. I suppose there isn't a club in London at which it has not been repeated a hundred times that George Roden is not George Roden."
"Not George Roden?" asked Marion.
"No, dearest. You will show yourself terribly ignorant if you call him so."