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 people, and I'm afraid it's all up with hers; and the girl isn't going to marry me without the consent of all parties."

The statement of the vain young fellow seemed both florid and ingenuous to Arminius Wingrove, who had hardly been so much amused by anything since the revival of The Importance of Being Earnest.

"And so you don't think she'll marry you, do you, my son?"

Arminius Wingrove had not a mercenary nature, but he wouldn't mind laying a "pony" on the event. The heart of the heir to the barony gave a bound.

"Why, what reason have you to think so, Minnie?" he said in a voice of tense emotion.

"Because there's not half a reason why she shouldn't, my lad."

"But she is simply devoted to her old grandmother."

"The old lady has all her faculties, I presume?"

"My Mater thinks so, anyway."

"Well, then, there's not half a reason why the girl shouldn't marry you."

Still the reasoning of Arminius Wingrove was not altogether clear to the heir to the barony, who, to be sure, was somewhat slow in the uptake.

"Do you suppose, young feller, that any girl's grandmother would stand in the way of forty thousand a year and a peerage?"