will be quite strong and healthy although she may never have what you
would call a good figure. But there is a matter on which I want to
speak to you. The fact is, I am going to be married."

"To whom?"

"To the lady whom you will see at lunch, Cissy's mother."

Frank said: "If you really love her I have nothing to say against it."
Willy did not answer. Frank waited for an answer and then broke the
silence: "But do you love her?"

"Yes, I am very fond of her; she is a very good sort."

Frank was implacable. "Do you love her like the other one?" The
question wounded, but Frank was absorbed in his own special
sentimentalities.

"I was younger then, it is not the same; I am getting old. How many
years older am I than you--seven, I think? You are three-and-twenty, I
am thirty. How time flies!"

"Yes, I am three-and-twenty--you don't look thirty."

"I feel it, though; few fellows have had so much trouble as I have.
Your life has been all pleasure."

"If a man really loves a woman he is always right to marry her. Why
should we suppose that a woman may not reform--that true love may not
raise her? I was talking to a novelist the other day; he told me