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Macfarren looked furtively at his watch. It was half-past six—just his dinner-hour. It would be easy enough to take Marian down to dinner, if he could get one of the score of pleasant married women in the hotel with whom he was on friendly terms to go with her; and, although it is always awkward to suggest a chaperon to a girl, yet it must be done.

"We will go to the dining-room immediately. But I must secure a chaperon for you. That would be necessary, you know, to prevent talk," said Macfarren.

"A chaperon?" asked Marian, wonderingly. "Is it a head-covering, lest the wind should rumple my coif? Or is it one of the new coaches brought from France, in which I hear the nobility take the air?"

"It is neither," answered Macfarren, feeling anxious that no objection should be made to the arrangement. "It is a married lady to attend you—" He halted, but Marian took it up at once.

"A lady-in-waiting, meanest thou? If she is of suitable rank I shall be well pleased. At King's Lyndon I had two damsels, daughters of knights, to wait on my pleasure. Whom wilt have to attend me?"