he said firmly. “I am promised to Miss Forbes and there is no honorable way in which I can break that engagement.” "Fiddlesticks!" she returned, her cold black eyes raking his face. “A young lady of five and twenty will hardly be willing to wait a year to wed. She’s on the shelf now, my boy, and you can be sure she has no intention of waiting a twelvemonth with all its inherent hazards now that you are Viscount Pontley.” “I should think it all the more reason she would be willing to wait,” he murmured. “For your title? There’s little enough in it, Pontley. My sons, God rest their souls, had no idea of estate management and were both addicted to gambling.” There was no trace of grief in her hard, bitter face, though her body was encased in the deepest black bombazine of mourning and the room about them was shuttered and the furniture draped with black. “In your position it will be necessary for you to marry an heiress in order to restore Lockwood to its proper glory.
