Lady Blanchemain’s eyes, as she listened, had become deep wells of disappointment, then gushing fountains of reproach.

“Oh, you villain!” she groaned, when he had ended, shaking her pretty fist.  “So to have raised my expectations, and so to dash them!—­Do you really mean,” still clinging to a shred of hope, she pleaded, “really, really mean that there’s no—­no actual woman?”

“I’m sorry,” said John, “but I’m afraid I really, really do.”

“And you’re not—­not really in love with any one?”

“No—­not really,” he said, with a mien that feigned contrition.

“But at your age—­how old are you?” she broke off to demand.

“Somewhere between twenty-nine and thirty, I believe,” he laughed.

“And in such a romantic environment, and not on account of a woman!  It’s downright unnatural,” she declared.  “It’s flat treason against the kingly state of youth.”

“I’m awfully sorry,” said John.  “Yet, after all, what’s the good of repining?  Nothing could happen even if there were a woman.”

Lady Blanchemain looked alarmed.

“Nothing could happen?  What do you mean?  You’re not married?  If you are, it must be secretly, for you’re put down as single in Burke.”

“To the best of my knowledge,” John reassured her, laughing, “Burke is right.  And I prayerfully trust he may never have occasion to revise his statement.”

“For mercy’s sake,” cried she, “don’t tell me you’re a woman-hater!”

“That’s just the point,” said he.  “I’m an adorer of the sex.”

“Well, then?” questioned she, at a loss.  “How can you ‘prayerfully’ wish to remain a bachelor?  Besides, aren’t you heir to a peerage?  What of the succession?”

“That’s just the point,” he perversely argued.  “And you know there are plenty of cousins.”

“Just the point! just the point!” fretted Lady Blanchemain.  “What’s just the point?  Just the point that you aren’t a woman-hater?—­just the point that you’re heir to a peerage?  You talk like Tom o’ Bedlam.”

“Well, you see,” expounded John, unruffled, “as an adorer of the sex, and heir to a peerage, I shouldn’t want to marry a woman unless I could support her in what they call a manner becoming her rank—­and I couldn’t.”

“Couldn’t?” the lady scoffed.  “I should like to know why not?”

“I’m too—­if you will allow me to clothe my thought in somewhat homely language—­too beastly poor.”

“You—­poor?” ejaculated Lady Blanchemain, falling back.

“Ay—­but honest,” asseverated John, to calm her fears.

She couldn’t help smiling, though she resolutely frowned.

“Be serious,” she enjoined him.  “Doesn’t your uncle make you a suitable allowance?”

“I should deceive you,” answered John, “if I said he made me an unsuitable one.  He makes me, to put it in round numbers, exactly no allowance whatsoever.”