"Not— Oh, I must go home," piped Titania. "Augustin, she's capable of marrying a chauffeur, because he can drive at sixty miles an hour,—or—or a groom!"

"I'd rather marry either or both," said Pen, furiously, "than be mobbed and musicked into matrimony with a grinning crowd of idiots looking on."

"This is immoral," said Titania, "it's very immoral; you couldn't marry both. I'll go home, Bradstock."

And Bradstock took her there.

"You've done it, Titania," he said, as they drove. "She's as obstinate and as violent as a passive resister. You've put her bristles up, and Pen never goes back from what she says."

"You are very like a man, Augustin," sobbed the duchess.

"She's more like a woman than I'm like a man," growled Bradstock.

He had never risen to eminence, and only once to his feet in the Upper House, and sometimes this rankled.

"Yes, I mean it, I mean it," said Penelope.

"And I wanted to be your bridesmaid," sobbed Ethel.