You shall--damn you!--or I'll compel you!" Mr.Caryll smiled very engagingly.

The matter was speeding excellently--a comedy the like of which he did not remember to have played a part in since his student days at Oxford, ten years and more ago.
"I had thought," said he, "that the woman who summoned me to be a witness of this--this--ah wedding"-- there was a whole volume of criticism in his utterance of the word--"was the landlady of the 'Adam and Eve.' I begin to think that she was this lady's good angel; Fate, clothed, for once, matronly and benign." Then he dropped the easy, bantering manner with a suddenness that was startling.

Gallic fire blazed up through British training.

"Let us speak plainly, my Lord Rotherby.

This marriage is no marriage.