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“He would take me fast enough if we could afford the money. I say, Lottie, the governor was awfully late last night: did you hear him coming in? I want to tell you something about him—something I have heard.”

“I think you were very late, too, Law.”

“Oh! never mind about that; it does not matter about me. Lottie, listen. A friend—I mean somebody—was speaking to me about him. Did it ever come into your head that he was not an old man, and that such a thing was possible as that he might—it seems too ridiculous to say it—marry again?”

“Marry again? you are dreaming!” cried Lottie loudly, in her astonishment.

“Yes, while we knew nothing of it. After all, when you come to think of it, when you look at him, you know, he is not so awfully old. One thinks he must be, because he is one’s father. But some of these old beggars are just as silly”—said Law in awestruck tones, “and you can’t stop them doing things as you can a fellow that is young. It is an awful shame! a fellow that is under age, as they call it, you can pull him up, though there’s no harm in him; but an old fellow of fifty, you can’t stop him, whatever nonsense he may set his face to. That’s what I heard last night.”