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156 afterwards, and only know that nobody listened and everybody laughed."

"Ah! let us have lots of that at Brayton," he said.

Lucia suddenly gave a little exclamation of annoyance. Cigarettes had been handed round almost during dessert, and she, without thinking, had taken one. Edgar knew she smoked in private, but he held very strong and marvellously old-fashioned views, so it seemed to Lucia, about women smoking in public. This was one of the things in which she gave way to him without a murmur; it mattered very little to her, and for some reason which she could not understand he disliked it. But for the moment she had entirely forgotten, till, looking up, she saw his eyes fixed on her in distinct disapproval. The disapproval she tacitly resented, but she was annoyed with herself at her own forgetfulness, and instantly quenched the burning end of her cigarette in her finger-bowl, and gave him a little glance of deprecating apology across the table. But Charlie had heard her exclamation, and followed the little drama with comprehension.

"I'm sure he has discussed that with you," he said.

Lucia collected eyes, and rose.

"I love prejudices," she said; "it is they that make people individual. People's dislikes are always more characteristic joi them than their likes."

"Their likes? The likes of them?" he asked.

Lucia laughed at the futility of this.

"Ah! keep that for Brayton," she said.

Their guests showed no tendency to wish to go on anywhere, and the prohibition to leave before half-past eleven was universally construed as a permission to stop till twelve. There was a little music, and a couple of bridge-tables had been put out, but Edgar noted with satisfaction that, though Lucia had twice called attention to these, nobody had played.

"It is too pathetic that most people cannot get through an evening without sitting down to win each other's money," he had said to Lucia once. "Do let our house be known as one where anybody is, of course, perfectly at liberty to play cards, but where nobody does."

This was immediately after their return to town this year, as they were driving home from a house where Edgar had been compelled to make up a table, and had lost twenty pounds with