‘You do me infinite honour.  You pay me a great compliment,’ ejaculated Lady Carbury.

‘Well?’

’How am I to answer you at a moment?  I expected nothing of this.  As God is to be my judge it has come upon me like a dream.  I look upon your position as almost the highest in England,—­on your prosperity as the uttermost that can be achieved.’

’That prosperity, such as it is, I desire most anxiously to share with you.’

’You tell me so;—­but I can hardly yet believe it.  And then how am I to know my own feelings so suddenly?  Marriage as I have found it, Mr Broune, has not been happy.  I have suffered much.  I have been wounded in every joint, hurt in...