"I think Master Jack is making it all square with Sophie Mellerby." If there was anything that Lady Scroope hated almost as much as improper marriages it was slang.

She professed that she did not understand it; and in carrying out her profession always stopped the conversation to have any word explained to her which she thought had been used in an improper sense.

The idea of a young man making it "all square" with a young woman was repulsive, but the idea of this young man making it "all square" with this young woman was so much more repulsive, and the misery to her was so intensely heightened by the unconcern displayed by the heir in so speaking of the girl with whom he ought to have been making it "all square" himself, that she could hardly allow herself to be arrested by that stumbling block.

"Impossible!" she exclaimed,--"that is if you mean,--if you mean,--if you mean anything at all." "I do mean a good deal." "Then I don't believe a word of it.

It's quite out of the question.