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338 "I think I should like to go to bed early," she said, "as I must see to my packing up."

"Richards will do all that for you, my dear."

"Oh yes, thank you, nothing can be kinder than Richards. But I'll just see to my own dresses."

And so she went to bed early.

Lady Lufton did not see her son for the next two days, but when she did, of course she said a word or two about Griselda.

"You have heard the news, Ludovic?" she asked.

"Oh yes; it's at all the clubs. I have been overwhelmed with presents of willow branches."

"You, at any rate, have got nothing to regret," she said.

"Nor you either, mother. I am sure that you do not think you have. Say that you do not regret it. Dearest mother, say so for my sake. Do you not know in your heart of hearts that she was not suited to be happy as my wife, or to make me happy?"

"Perhaps not," said Lady Lufton, sighing. And then she kissed her son, and declared to herself that no girl in England could be good enough for him.



engagement with Griselda Grantly was the talk of the town for the next ten days. It formed, at least, one of two subjects which monopolized attention, the other being that dreadful rumor, first put in motion by Tom Towers at Miss Dunstable's party, as to a threatened dissolution of Parliament.

"Perhaps, after all, it will be the best thing for us," said Mr. Green Walker, who felt himself to be tolerably safe at Crewe Junction.

"I regard it as a most wicked attempt," said Harold Smith, who was not equally secure in his own borough, and to whom the expense of an election was disagreeable. "It is done in order that they may get time to tide over the autumn. They won't gain ten votes by a dissolution, and less than forty would hardly give them a majority. But they have no sense of public duty—none whatever. Indeed, I don't know who has."

