As Lord Windlehurst uttered the last word with an arid smile, he looked
quizzically at the central figure of a group of people gaily talking.

The Duchess impatiently tapped her knee with a fan. "Be thankful you
haven't got him on your conscience," she rejoined. "I call Eglington
unscrupulous and unreliable. He has but one god--getting on; and he has
got on, with a vengeance. Whenever I look at that dear thing he's
married, I feel there's no trusting Providence, who seems to make the
deserving a footstool for the undeserving. I've known Hylda since she
was ten, and I've known him since the minute he came into the world, and
I've got the measure of both. She is the finest essence the middle class
can distil, and he, oh, he's paraffin-vin ordinaire, if you like it
better, a selfish, calculating adventurer!"

Lord Windlehurst chuckled mordantly. "Adventurer! That's what they
called me--with more reason. I spotted him as soon as he spoke in the
House. There was devilry in him, and unscrupulousness, as you say; but,
I confess, I thought it would give way to the more profitable habit of
integrity, and that some cause would seize him, make him sincere and
mistaken, and give him a few falls. But in that he was more original
than I thought. He is superior to convictions. You don't think he
married yonder Queen of Hearts from conviction, do you?"

He nodded towards a corner where Hylda, under a great palm, and backed by
a bank of flowers, stood surrounded by a group of people palpably amused
and interested; for she had a reputation for wit--a wit that never hurt,
and irony that was only whimsical.

"No, there you are wrong," the Duchess answered. "He married from
conviction, if ever a man did. Look at her beauty, look at her fortune,