Page:Lady Barbarity; a romance (IA ladybarbarityrom00snai).pdf/25

 caudles. Conceive your brilliant Bab, the handsomest wretch in the realm, who hath all the kingdom kissing her satin shoe, reduced to this in her later years! For I'll warrant me there is not a Man in London."

"Why, what is this?" cries out my lord, his eyebrows rising in surprise. "Is there not the Duke of, with his town and country houses? Is he not a Privy Councillor? Hath he not the Garter? Hath he not a rent-roll, and would he not make a duchess of you any day you please?"

"My lord," I answered, sadly, "I am unhappily cursed with a keen nose for a fool."

He looked at me and smiled.

"He is a duke, my dear. But madam is a woman, therefore let me not attempt to understand her. But there is the Earl of H, and the Hon. A, and Mr. W; indeed, every bachelor of station, lands, and pedigree in town."

"Of which I am bitterly aware," I sighed. "But I require a man, my lord, not a name and a suit of clothes."

The delightful old barbarian did not apprehend my meaning, I am sure, but the secret of his reputation lay in the fact that he never let the world know that there was a subject in earth or heaven that he did not understand. When a topic travelled beyond the dominion of his mind, he preserved a melancholy silence, and contrived to appear as though the thing was too trivial to occupy his thoughts. But he changed the conversation at the