"To be sure,--you know they are to be married soon. Merton told me so.
She is very rich. He is the luckiest fellow imaginable, that Vargrave!
But he is much too old for her: she seems to think so too. I can't
explain why I think it; but by her pretty reserved manner I saw that she
tried to keep the gay minister at a distance: but it would not do. Now,
if you were ten years younger, or Miss Cameron ten years older, you might
have had some chance of cutting out your old friend."

"So you think I also am too old for a lover?"

"For a lover of a girl of seventeen, certainly. You seem touchy on the
score of age, Ernest."

"Not I;" and Maltravers laughed.

"No? There was a young gentleman present, who, I think, Vargrave might
really find a dangerous rival,--a Colonel Legard,--one of the handsomest
men I ever saw in my life; just the style to turn a romantic young lady's
head; a mixture of the wild and the thoroughbred; black curls, superb
eyes, and the softest manners in the world. But, to be sure, he has
lived all his life in the best society. Not so his friend, Lord
Doltimore, who has a little too much of the green-room lounge and French
_cafe_ manner for my taste."

"Doltimore, Legard, names new to me; I never met them at the rectory."

"Possibly they are staying at Admiral Legard's, in the neighbourhood.
Miss Merton made their acquaintance at Knaresdean. A good old lady--the
most perfect Mrs. Grundy one would wish to meet with--who owns the