mother, my dear Sir Willoughby.«
    »This is how I read you: -«
    »I shall accept any interpretation that is complimentary.«
    »Not one will satisfy me of being sufficiently so, and so I leave it to the
character to fill out the epigram.«
    »Do. What hurry is there? And don't be misled by your objection to rogue;
which would be reasonable if you had not secured her.«
    The door of a hollow chamber of horrible reverberation was opened within him
by this remark.
    He tried to say in jest, that it was not always a passionate admiration that
held the rogue fast; but he muddled it in the thick of his conscious thunder,
and Mrs. Mountstuart smiled to see him shot from the smooth-flowing dialogue
into the cataracts by one simple reminder to the lover of his luck. Necessarily
after a fall, the pitch of their conversation relaxed.
    »Miss Dale is looking well,« he said.
    »Fairly: she ought to marry,« said Mrs. Mountstuart.
    He shook his head. »Persuade her.«
    She nodded: »Example may have some effect.«
    He looked extremely abstracted. »Yes, it is time. Where is the man you could
recommend for her complement? She has now what was missing before, a ripe
intelligence in addition to her happy disposition - romantic, you would say. I
can't think women the worse for that.«
    »A dash of it.«
    »She calls it leafage.«
    »Very pretty. And have you relented about your horse Achmet?«
    »I don't sell him under four hundred.«
    »Poor Johnny Busshe! You forget that his wife doles him out his money.
You're a hard bargainer, Sir Willoughby.«
    »I mean the price to be prohibitive.«
    »Very well; and leafage is good for hide and seek; especially when there is
no rogue in ambush. And that's the worst I can say of Lætitia Dale. An
exaggerated devotion is the scandal of our sex. They say you're the hardest man
of business in the county too, and I can believe it; for at home and abroad your
aim is to get the best of everybody. You see I've no leafage, I am perfectly
matter-of-fact, bald.«
    »Nevertheless, my dear Mrs. Mountstuart, I can assure you that conversing
with you has much the same exhilarating effect on me as conversing with Miss
Dale.«
    »But, leafage! leafage!