 her forehead. "Let me entreat you not to raise your voice!" she said. "I have had quite enough to try my nerves this evening. I mean that I think Mr. Bragg is interested in May. It would be a splendid match for her."

"What?" cried Frederick, disregarding his wife's request, and raising his voice considerably. "Old Bragg!"

Pauline turned on him impressively. "Frederick," she said, speaking with patient mildness, as one imparting higher lore to some untutored savage, "Mr. Bragg is barely fifty-four; and his income—entirely within his own control—is over sixty thousand a year."

CHAPTER XVI.

Theodore did not take his rejection meekly. In his interview with Mr. Dormer-Smith he pressed hard to see May again, and insinuated that she was under undue influence. Moreover, he conveyed, with stiff civility, that he considered himself to have been badly treated by the whole family, who had first encouraged his attentions and then rejected them.

"He really is a fearful young man!" said May to her aunt on hearing the report of the interview. "What does he mean by insisting on 'an answer from my own lips'? Could he not believe what Uncle Frederick said? Besides, he has had his answer from me. The truth is, he is so outrageously conceited that he can't believe any young woman would refuse him of her own free will."

"The idea of his dreaming for an instant that I encouraged him is too preposterous," said Mrs. Dormer-Smith, shaking her head languidly. "I am sadly disappointed. I thought him quite a nice person. I fancied he had sufficient savoir vivre to understand——However, it is one more proof that one can never reckon on half-bred people who don't know the world."

It was privately a great relief to May to know that her aunt took her part in this affair. Aunt Pauline's motives and views were still very mysterious to May on many points. She did not even now fully understand the grounds of her aunt's virtuous indignation against Theodore Bransby, although she was thankful for it. "Aunt Pauline thought him good enough for Conny," said May to herself innocently; "and Conny is so beautiful, and so much admired!"

It was true that—thanks, in the first place, to Mrs. Griffin—Constance had enjoyed a more brilliant season than she had ever ventured to dream of. Fashionable houses, of which she had read in the
