"Well--perhaps--just a shade," she archly agreed. "And of ponderosity you must make an effort to cure yourself.--Mind, though a fault, I consider it one on the right side--in the connection, that is, which we have just now been discussing. When a girl has as much intelligence as--we needn't name names, need we?--she resents perpetual chaff and piffle. They bore her--seem to her a flagrant waste of time. Her mind tends to scorn delights and live laborious days--a tendency which rectifies itself later as a rule. All the same in avoiding frivolity, one must not rush to the other extreme and be heavy in hand. A happy mien in this as in all things, my dear Marshall." "I cannot so far degrade myself as to be an opportunist," he returned sententiously. "Yet the opportunist arrives; and to arrive is the main thing, after all--at least I imagine so.--Now I really cannot stay here any longer giving you priceless advice; but must take the General his newspapers.--By the way, did Sir Charles say anything about coming to see him this afternoon?" As she asked the question Henrietta ran her eye down over the announcements in the Court Circular. Marshall replied in the negative. She made no comment, hardly appearing to notice his answer. But, as she stepped lightly and delicately away down the airy corridor to the door of the sick-room, over her blue gauze draped shoulder she flung back at him-- "This confinement to the house is getting quite on my nerves. I must really allow myself a little holiday.--Take a drive to-morrow if Frederic is no worse. I will call at the Grand Hotel, I think, and see darling Damaris, just for a few minutes, myself." Information which went far to restore her hearer's equanimity. His affairs, as he recognized, were in actively astute safe-keeping. Marshall Wace spent the rest of the morning in the drawing-room of the villa, at the piano, composing a by no means despicable setting of Shelley's two marvellous stanzas, which commence: "Rarely, rarely comest thou, Spirit of Delight! Wherefore hast thou left me now Many a day and night?"