there was nothing in it. If you are really dining out, dad, I shall go to the play with Charlie."

"Alone?"

"Don't be silly, dear," Letitia protested, flicking her whip. "Remember what that wicked old lady wrote in her memoirs--'Balham requires a chaperon, but Grosvenor Square never.' I shall try and get used to him this evening. I may even have wonderful news for you in the morning."

The Marquis took up his book again. "I wish, my dear, that I could believe it," he told her fervently."Do you think," he asked, "that I look upon you as a promising investment?"

"Well, I am," Marcia replied. "You admit having made money out of me this spring."

"At any rate, I am willing to divide it," he suggested.

"Upon conditions!"

"No one in the world gives something for nothing," he reminded her.

"We seem to be mixing up business and the other things most shockingly," Marcia declared. "Do you really mean that you are willing to share the profits of my next novel with me?"

"I couldn't do that," he objected, "it would be too unbusinesslike. I am quite willing, however, to share my life and all I have with you."

"Mere rhetoric!" Marcia exclaimed uneasily.

"Solemn earnest," he insisted. "Will you marry me, Marcia?"

She looked across at him. Her eyebrows were a little raised, her eyes inclined to be misty, her mouth tremulous.

"James," she replied, "I believe I'd like to. I'm not quite sure--I believe I would. But just tell me--how can I?"

"He has kept you to himself for pretty well twenty years," Borden said gruffly.

She sighed.

"When I was a child of seventeen," she confided, "a young farmer down at Mandeleys kissed me. If I had been one year younger," she went on, "I should have spat at him. As it was, I never spoke to him again. Then, a few months after that, the schoolmaster at the school where 

 Prev. P 88/218 next