cution because at first you do not perceive it; and still, though her cheeks are faded, and her eyes have a few faint lines round them, it is terrible as an army with banners' lying in wait for you amongst autumnal brushwood."

وو

"Men like you, Mr. Marsham," said Mrs. Crane, with a tone of pique in her voice, "are very transparent creatures. You are devoted to Lady Di, or at least you have been. Indeed, Mrs. Fitzpatrick told me as much, when I was talking to her just now on the platform. "My cousin," said Marsham, laughing, "is a born match-maker ; so you must not pay a moment's attention to what she says. No, my praise of Lady Di is quite disinterested. It is true I have known her very well. But then, is not that as much as to say that I am not in love with her?"

Marsham said this with such frankly genuine carelessness that Mrs. Crane's good temper at once returned to her. "Well, I admit," she said graciously, "that Lady Di does dress to perfection. She has the prettiest boots I ever saw (I must ask her where she gets them), and the prettiest hands too; only she never takes her gloves off. And whether she can conquer or no, her dress could show any woman that she at least wishes to do so."

The party were now alighting at the station; and as they were walking down a short reach of road to the villa gates, Mrs. Fitzpatrick again joined Mrs. Crane and Marsham.

In

"I think, Philip," she said, with a sort of reproval in her voice, "I heard you tell Mrs. Crane that Lady Di was in heart half a pagan. I must set your companion right there. Di is as good a Christian as any of us. Her great charm to me is that she is a Catholic without bigotry. She believes, I've no doubt, firmly in her own faith. fact, there is much of it that is so beautiful that a mind like hers must cling to it if possible. But she knows that to be good and gen uine is of more importance than creeds: she does not care two straws for the Pope; and she likes a book all the better if it has not been written by a Papist. But," she added, making the others pause and look behind them a moment, "do you see, high up the hill, amongst the grey olives, just over the zigzag mule-track, and beyond the gleaming cottages, where a little chapel stands, amongst its black cypresses? Well, there Lady Di climbs daily, and says her prayers in solitude, in a dim, musty twilight, amongst faint smells of incense: and then meditates on the rusty crosses in the graveyard, and looks out over the endless levels of the sea. How can you," she said to Marsham in a low tender tone, "speak as you did of the only woman who has ever really loved you?"

Marsham's only reply was a soft genial laugh, which showed his cousin at once that her words had no meaning for him. "Men are very stupid," she said to herself softly. "Poor Di! and stupidstupid Philip!"

Meanwhile, under the shadow of mimosas, palms, and cypresses,

a long winding carriage drive had brought them to the villa, and there Lady Di received them in a large marble hall. A man, who had been told that her face had a charm lurking in it, might have detected the charm at once, and her general aspect, even if he had not been told, might have warned him unconsciously to expect it Her long plain dress of tight fitting grey velvet not only showed all the curves of her perfect figure, but her own knowledge of their per fection also; and there was a sense about her as she moved and spoke -not indeed of coquetry, she was too serene and too confident for that—but of the subtle abandon, perceived like a faint perfume, of a woman accustomed, if not to love, at any rate to have love made to her Nor did at breakfast this impression wear off. Not a word did she utter about philosophy or Greek poetry: and her only allusion to religion was to say that her Italian concierge hoped to cure his rheumatism by applying a painted woodcut of St. Joseph to it. She talked much to Marsham, with animation, but, as Mrs. Fitzpatrick observed, without a sign of tenderness. She spoke with gaiety and interest of the gossip of Nice and Monte Carlo; she touched on several doubtful histories with a mixture of familiarity and delicacy; and she won golden opinions of Mrs. Crane, first as to her wisdom, by saying that marriage was a mistake, and then as to her taste, by describing how she had once been to a fancy ball as Rosalind. The entertainment seemed altogether to be a complete success. Conversation was quick and sparkling all round the table; and long before a break-up was needful, regrets were to be heard that there need be any break up at all.

"He was a wise man, Lady Di," exclaimed Lord Surbiton, a poet, a diplomat, and a dandy of the last generation, laying a jewelled hand on his heart, and repressing a hollow cough, "he was a wise man who said that the climax of civilisation was the getting together a certain number of knees under one piece of mahogany."

"Or two pairs of lips," said Marsham, “on a single ottoman.” 'Or fifty pairs of hands," said Mrs. Crane, "round a single trenteet quarante table."

Any savage can love," said Lord Surbiton, "and any savage can gamble; but it is only civilised man that can really talk. And, therefore, a charming and accomplished hostess, who alone can make conversation possible, is, properly speaking, the high priestess of civilisation."

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Now, come, Lord Surbiton," said Lady Di, "and let us consider that for a moment. We have all of us here to day been, no donbt, most charming. But has one of us uttered a serious thought, or said a single thing worth remembering? Our talk would seem very pointless, I'm afraid, if it were written down."

"Precisely, my dear lady," said Lord Surbiton, "and for this In fine conversation the mere words are but a small part of it. The magic of these depends on that viewless world of asso

reason.

ciation that is born and dies with each special day and company. They are like a spell, an incantation; they evoke, they do not describe; like other spells, they are effectual only in a charmed circle; and, like other spells, to outsiders, they are apt to sound mere gibberish. And this is the reason why fine dialogue in books can never be what is called natural; for art has to concentrate into one mode of expression what in real life is conveyed to us by a thousand. And, even then, how often the result is a failure! What poet's art," he went on, preparing a sigh that made his satin necktie creak, "what poet's art can supply the want of a woman's living eyes, or the personal memory of one's own relations with her?"

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'Surely," said Lady Di, "if, as you say, any savage can make love, any savage can make eyes also. And you, Lord Surbiton, ought to be above such savagery.”

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'You mistake me," said Lord Surbiton, who had meanwhile been fixing his own hollow eyes upon Mrs. Crane. I said that any savage could love; not that any savage could make love. The latter is a rare social accomplishment. The former is a universal private mis

fortune."

"Yes," said Lady Otho pensively, with a charming expression of sadness, "I suppose love on the whole does cause more sorrow than happiness. If girls never fell in love, they would never run away from their husbands, and then half the misery one hears of every year would be spared one."

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And yet, my dear," said Mrs. Fitzpatrick, shallow thing without its sorrows.

"life would be a very

"All sorrow is experie nce," said Lord Surbiton, "and goes to make us into men and women of the world. Passion," he coughed out slowly amidst a general silence, "is a great educator; but its work only begins when it itself has left us. I have observed, and I think with truth, in one of my own romances, that a woman of the world should always have been, but should never be, in love. She should always have had a grief, but she should never have a grievance. She should always be the mistress of a sorrow, but never its servant. The happiness of society, as I have observed in another place, is based on the pains of private or domestic experience. But our hours," he added, "of such perfect happiness are, alas! as fleeting as they are exquisite; and as we are most of us on our way to Monte Carlo, your musical clock, Lady Di, warns us that we must soon be moving."

"I said just now," said Lady Di, "that we had none of us uttered anything worth remembering. You, Lord Surbiton, have at any rate freed us from that reproach.'

"If I have," said Lord Surbiton, "I am sincerely sorry. The best conversation is never worth remembering. It is a delicate rose that will not survive for an instant the stalk it grows on. It is a fine champagne, that sparkles and rejoices us for the moment, but whose excellence we are never so sure of as when we find it has left no trace of itself next morning."

And if true conversation," said Marsham, as the company were rising, "is like good champagne, true love is like bad. False and true taste equally well at the moment, and we only detect the true when we find that it has made our heads ache afterwards."

"Very well put," said Lord Surbiton, with a low chuckle, as Marsham was helping him into a huge overcoat, lined with splendid sables. "You are coming with us, Mr. Marsham, are you not?"

་་

“Are you?" murmured Lady Di, who was standing close beside him. "I had hoped you would have stayed with me for an hour or two, for I want your help so very much in the library.

Marsham looked doubtful and disappointed, but Lady Di was in vincible in such small social manoeuvres, and in a few words with Lady Otho the whole thing had been settled.

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"And what," said Mrs. Crane confidentially, "will Countess Marie think of you, Mr. Philip, when she promised to sing your boat song to-night as we came home on the water?" "Never fear about that," said Marsham. You are to pick me up here at the landing stage at the bottom of the garden; and meanwhile give my friend my best remembrances, and tell her I've stayed behind here to discuss theology

"I thought," Mrs. Crane whispered, "it was flirtation you stayed behind for, and not theology!"

"I never knew," he answered, "that the two had much in common. However, I suppose, on second thoughts, all false and useless things have a certain family likeness."

'Well, upon my word," said Mrs Crane to Mrs. Fitzpatrick, as they were strolling slowly towards the station, "though I have seen many male flirts in my day, I never saw so busy a one as Mr. Philip, your cousin."

"I'm sorry to hear it, my dear," said Mrs. Fitzpatrick, with real feeling.

"See, Mr Marsham," said Lady Di, as she brought him into the long quiet library. “I still keep my old tastes, and I still spend half my morning here You know this room, don't you? It was here I first had the pleasure of meeting you, That was six years ago, and I remember to this day how I first saw you, as you came from your father's yacht, appear between those two tall cypresses. You were surprised, were you not, to find a student and a would be poetess in what, at first sight, as you afterwards confessed, you took for a young Parisian adventuress? However, I dress more quietly now. that your opinion?" She had put on since breakfast a grey velvet hat that matched her dress, and that made her look five years younger; and she leant back against a bookcase, conscious of an attraction which she felt she exercised. "Ah!" she went on in a few moments, those were happy days We were brother and sister for a whole cloudless fortnight You were the very thing that at that time I wanted-a companion of my own age and tastes. Do you see that

Is not

book in white vellum? That is the very Eschylus over which you smiled to find me poring. And now," she said, as she motioned him to a chair,"sit down by my writing table, and wait patiently whilst I read you something."

"Good heavens!" cried Marsham, as he watched her take from a drawer a locked manuscript-book, "how well I recollect that dull blue binding! You had some scraps of mine inside it once, I believe— bits of translation I did from the plays we read together She held up her delicate hand to enjoin silence "Listen," she said tenderly, "this is how the sea nymphs sang to the bound Prometheus in his solitude, as they floated up to him, not from a yacht on the blue sea's surface, but from their coral caves far down under it.

'Sufferer, fear not; love hath seut us:
Yearning with compassion, we.

We have stilled our father's tongue, fain to prevent us,
We have left our clear homes in the deep blue sea,
We have travelled far

In our winged car,

For thee, for thee!

For through our still, wave-dripping grottoes rang
A hideous, brazen clang,

Breaking our noon-day dreamings in our peaceful sea.
With unsandaled reet,
Breathless and fleet,

To our winged car we sprang,
For thee, for thee!*

"Do you remember that?" she said, with a quiet look at Marsham. "Listen again, then. You must surely be flattered at hearing your own verses. You sent me this from Genoa. It is out of the Agamemnon; and it is, strangely enough, the last passage we ever read together:

'Woe to the proud house! woe

To the proud house, and the mighty men thereof!
Desolate are the palaces: for lo,

From them the presence is gone forth of love.
And he is left astonied at his lot,

And silent-our lone lord;

Dishonoured, yet he speaks no swelling word,
Stricken, he revileth not.

Only it seems we have a ghost to king,

Our king is changed in such wise-yea, so grown
More sad than any living, fleshly thing;
For even like a ghost's to look upon

(So neeply, deeply, he

Sickeneth by reason of his desire extreme
For her beyond the sea),

His goings, to and fro, and gazings seem.
Nor can his home of marble any more

Please him, nor all its wealth of wrought device

*Prometheus Vinctus, 127-137.