'I meant to do it, but I wanted her to be very fond of me first. Then came the row; old Pew expelled her because she had been carrying on a clandestine flirtation with a young man. Her character was compromised, and as a man of honour I had no course but to propose immediate marriage.'

'Her character was not compromised, because Miss Pew chose to act like a vulgar old tyrant. The German governess, everybody in the school, knew that Miss Palliser was unjustly treated. There was no wound that needed to be salved by an imprudent marriage. But in any case, before proposing such a marriage, it was your bounden duty to tell her the truth about your circumstances, not to marry her to poverty without her full consent to the union.'

'Then I did not do my bounden duty,' Brian Walford answered sullenly. 'I believed in her disinterested affection. Why should she be more mercenary than I, who was willing to marry her without a sixpence in her pocket, without a second gown to her back? How could I suppose she was marrying me for the sake of a fine place and a fine fortune? I thought she was above such sordid considerations.'

'You ought to have been sure of that before you married her; you ought to have trusted her fully,' said the Colonel. 'However, having married her, why did you consent so tamely to let her go? Having let her go, why do you come here to-night to claim her?'

'Why did I let her go? Well she shrewed me so abominably when she found out my lowly position that my pride was roused, and I told her she might go where she pleased. Why did I come here to-night? Well, it was an impulse that brought me. I am passionately fond of her. I have lived without her for nearly a year—angry with her and with fate—but to day was the anniversary of our first meeting. I knew from Bessie that my wife was here, happy. There was even some hint of a flirtation between her and the real Brian,'—these last words were spoken with intense bitterness,—'and I thought it was time I should claim my own.'

'I think so too,' said Colonel Wendover, severely; 'you should have claimed her long ago. Your whole conduct is faulty in the extreme. You will be a very lucky man if your married life turns out happy after such a bad beginning.'

'Come, Colonel, we are both young,' remonstrated Brian, with that careless lightness which seemed natural to him, as a man who could hardly take the gravest problems of life seriously; 'there is no reason why we should not shake down into a very happy couple by-and-by.'

'And pray how are you to live?' inquired the Colonel. 'You are taking this girl from a most comfortable home—a position in which she is valued and useful. What do you intend to give her in exchange for the Homestead? A garret and a red herring?'

'Oh, no, sir; I hope it will be a long time before we come to that—though Beranger says that at twenty a man and the girl he loves may be happy in a garret. I think we shall do pretty well. My literary work widened a good deal while I was in Paris. I wrote for some of the London magazines, and the editors are good enough to think that I am rather a smart writer. I can earn something by my pen; I think enough to keep the pot boiling till briefs begin to drop in. My cousin was generous enough to offer me an income just now—four or five hundred a year so long as I should require it—but I told him that I thought I could support my wife with my pen for the next few years.'

'Your cousin is always generous,' said the Colonel.