"Lady Newladegge! why, she's five-and-thirty! and she's fat!"
"She wasn't always five-and-thirty, nor was she always fat. On the contrary, when she was twenty, and I was in love with her, she was slender, and, if one may so speak of a Peeress, she was cuddlesome!"
"Cuddlesome!" Jack cried, his deepest feelings outraged. "Good Heavens! to think of comparing Phil with a woman who was once cuddlesome!"
Lawrence Colquhoun laughed.
"In fifteen years, or thereabouts, perhaps you will take much the same view of things as I do. Meantime Jack, let things remain as they are. You shall have a fair chance with the rest; and you must remember that you have had a much better chance than anybody else, because you have had the first running. Leave off going to Twickenham quite so much; but don't stop going altogether, or Phillis may be led to suspect. Can't you contrive to slack off by degrees?"
Jack breathed a little more freely. The house, then, was not shut to him.
"The young lady will have her first season next year. I don't say I hope she will marry anybody else, Jack, but I am bound to give her the chance. As soon as she really understands a little more of life she will find out for herself what is best for her, perhaps. Now we've talked enough about it."
Jack Dunquerque went away sorrowful. He expected some such result of this endeavour to "square" it with Colquhoun, but yet he was disappointed.
"Hang it all, Jack," said Ladds, "what can you want more? You are told to wait a year. No one will step in between you and the young lady till she comes out. You are not told to discontinue your visits—only not to go too often, and not to compromise her. What more does the man want?"
"You are a very good fellow, Tommy," sighed the lover; "a very good fellow in the main. But you see, you don't know Phil. Let me call her Phil to you, old man. There's not another man in the world that I could talk about her to—not one, by Jove; it would seem a desecration."