“Come, De Burgh!  Hang it, I rarely eat lunch.”

“Only when you can get it.  Say two hundred and ninety times out of the three hundred and sixty-five days of the year.”

“I admit nothing of the sort.  The fact is, what I eat goes into a good skin.  Now you might cram the year round and be a bag of bones at the end of it.”

“Thank God for all his mercies,” replied De Burgh.  “The fact is, you are a spoiled favorite of fortune, and in addition to all the good things you have inherited you pick up a charming wife who spoils you and coddles you in a way to make the mouth of an unfortunate devil like myself water with envy.”

“None of that nonsense, De Burgh,” complacently.  “The heart of a benedict knoweth its own bitterness, though I can’t complain much.  If you hadn’t been the reckless roue you are, you might have been as well off as myself.”

De Burgh laughed.  “You see, I never cared for domestic bliss.  I hate fetters of every description, and I lay the ruin of my morals to the score of that immortal old relative of mine who persists in keeping me out of my heritage.  The conviction that you are always sure of an estate, and possibly thirty thousand a year, has a terrible effect on one’s character.”

“If you had stuck to the Service you’d have been high up by this time, with the reputation you made in the Mutiny time, for you were little more than a boy then.”

“Ay, or low down!  Not that I should have much to regret if I were.  I have had a lot of enjoyment out of life, however, but at present I am coming to the end of my tether.  I am afraid I’ll have to sell the few acres that are left to me, and if that gets to the Baron’s ears, good-by to my chance of his bequeathing me the fortune he has managed to scrape together between windfalls and lucky investments.  The late Baroness had a pot of money, you know.”

“I know there’s not much property to go with the title.”

“A beggarly five thousand a year.  I say, Ormonde, are you disposed for a good thing?  Lend me three thousand on good security?  Six per cent., old man!”

“I am not so disposed, my dear fellow!  I have a wife and my boy to think of now.”

“Exactly,” returned the other, with a sneer.  “You have a new edition of Colonel Ormonde’s precious self.”

“Oh, your sneers don’t touch me!  You always had your humors; still I am willing to help a kinsman, and I will give you a chance if you like.  What do you say to a rich young wife—­none of your crooked sticks?”

“It’s an awful remedy for one’s financial disease, to mortgage one’s self instead of one’s property; still I suppose I’ll have to come to it.  Who is the proposed mortgagee?”

“My wife’s sister.”

“Oh!”

The tone of this “Oh!” was in some unaccountable way offensive to Colonel Ormonde.  “Miss Liddell comes of a very good old county family I can tell you,” he said, quickly; “a branch of the Somerset Liddells; and when I saw her last she was the making of an uncommon fine woman.”