"He is hard to please."

"He is," assented the countess, with the same touch of pride.

"It is time he married and settled," continued the earl. "For[25] most men a year or two would not matter, but with him—I do not like to think that the title rests only on our two lives, as mine must be near its close."

[25]

"Algernon!"

"And on his, which is risked daily."

He stooped, silenced by the sudden look of pain in the beautiful eyes.

"Why do you not speak to him? He will do anything for you."

The countess smiled.

"Everything but that. No, I cannot speak to him; it would be useless. I do not wish to weaken my influence."

"Get Lilian to speak to him," he said.

The countess sighed.

"Lilian!" she murmured; "she would not do it. She thinks him something more than human, and that no woman in the world can be good enough to—to hold his stirrup or fill his wineglass."

The earl frowned.

"Between you," he said, "you have spoiled him."

The countess shook her head gently.

"No, we have not. He is now as a man what he was as a boy. Do you remember what Nelson said, when Hardy asked him why he did nothing while one of their ships was fighting two of the enemy's? 'I am doing all I can—watching.'"

Before the earl could reply, a cabinet minister came up and engaged him in conversation, and the countess rose and crossed the room to where an elderly lady sat with a portfolio of engravings before her. It was the Dowager Countess of Longford, a tiny little woman with a thin wrinkled face, and keen but kindly gray eyes that lit up her white 

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