"I can see Lady Victoria on a California ranch! She would yawn her head off. London is 'the world' in quotation marks. She couldn't, that seasoned lady, stay out of it six months. But about Sir Cadge--that was the final mystery. It actually kept me awake one night. You know the story, how devoted he was for about two years, and then how he ran away when her husband was killed, for fear he would have to marry her. Nobody knew exactly how she felt about it, for one thing must be said for the people of those effete old civilizations: their breeding carries them through any crisis without the turn of a hair. But the report was that she showed an inner convulsion in subtle outer vibrations, or people imagined she did, probably because she'd got to that age where she couldn't have many illusions left. Then, suddenly, this summer, he returns, and follows her to Homburg. He is all devotion. She is an iceberg. And she's gone off dreadfully. I saw her seven years ago at Covent Garden, and she was the handsomest thing I ever looked at. She's handsome yet, but her muscles are getting that loose look and her eyes are bottomless pits of ennui. Save me from being a fashionable demimondaine. Better go to the deuce and die in a garret. Something honest in that, anyhow--and more picturesque. There may be something behind, that we don't know anything about, but in my opinion she is not the happiest of women; and with such a handsome and agreeable man as Sir Cadge Vanneck at her feet, she is just an ingrate. We are not here, already? I wish I were not invited this evening, I'd simply _make_ you come home to dinner. And it seems so rude to leave you at the foot of this bluff; but there is just one thing the automobile can't do--" Isabel, her head spinning with many words, had been glad to express her pleasure in the day's entertainment and run up the steps to her refuge on the heights. She had found that Mr. Stone was still in bed and likely to remain there, and a haughty note from Paula announcing that she had returned to her children and should remain where she was wanted. She was vaguely planning to "do something" for Anne Montgomery, and congratulating herself that she could fly at will from people that talked too much, when she heard Gwynne's long stride on the plank walk, and called gayly to him out of the darkness "to stand and deliver." "I hope you carry a pistol," she added, anxiously, as he ran up the steps. "I scarcely ever pick up a newspaper without reading of a hold-up, and there were four on this hill last week. We change, out here, but we don't seem to improve much." XXIV