The Duchess looked shocked. After a prolonged silence, Lothaw abruptly and gravely said—
“If you please, ma’am, when I come into my property I should like to build some improved dwellings for the poor, and marry Lady Coriander.”
“You amaze me, dear friend, and yet both your aspirations are noble and eminently proper,” said the Duchess; “Coriander is but a child—and yet,” she added, looking graciously upon her companion, “for the matter of that, so are you.”
Chapter III.
Mr. Putney Padwick’s was Lothaw’s first grand dinner-party.
Yet, by carefully watching the others, he managed to acquit himself creditably, and avoided drinking out of the finger-bowl by first secretly testing its contents with a spoon.
The conversation was peculiar, and singularly interesting.
“Then you think that monogamy is simply a question of the thermometer?” said Mrs. Putney Padwick to her companion.
“I certainly think that polygamy should be limited by isothermal lines,” replied Lothaw.
“I should say it was a matter of latitude,” observed a loud, talkative man opposite.