"Kit, will you be serious a minute?" said he. "I want to say things; I can't say them, you know, but you are clever—you will understand."

Kit laid her hand on his arm with a sympathetic pressure of her fingers.

"Dear Toby," she said, "I understand perfectly, and I am delighted—delighted! It is charming."

Toby looked very serious.

"Kit, I wish you had never told me to fall in love with her," he said; "it has spoilt it all. Of course, it is not in consequence of what you said that I have, but I wish you hadn't suggested it that evening at the Hungarian dance. That she is rich, and that the world knows it, stands in front of me. It is a vile world; it will say I fell in love with her only because of that. Oh, damn!"

Kit was divided between amusement and impatience.

"It has been reserved for you, Toby, to discover that riches are a bar to matrimony," she observed; "the reverse is usually believed to be the case."

Toby shook his head. Kit appeared to him quite as tiresome as he to her.

"You don't understand," he said.