and Paris and London you will find students from these countries assimilating all that we can teach them, wisely using the best means that other nations can furnish for their own ends. You have the dominant characteristics of different types in every case. The real diplomatist deals rather with the Russian, the Italian, the Spaniard, than with Russia, Italy, and Spain." "Quite a good lesson in foreign affairs at first hand," said Lady Wereminster, turning to her neighbour, Meavy, who, a disappointed man, had had to resign his post through ill-health. "Given, if I mistake not, to some end. Has anything unusual struck you about our little party to-night?" Meavy looked round. "Calvert, our host—Farquharson and his wife, Creagh, Beadon, Hare, the Brands, your husband, you and myself—your sex is in the minority, Lady Wereminster." "Precisely the same party that was down at Creagh to meet Mr. Farquharson on his first introduction to English social life," said Lady Wereminster. "That was a year ago. Since then——" She shrugged her shoulders. "Tides ebb and flow, men come and go," quoted Meavy dreamily. "One man’s arrived," said Lady Wereminster. "A year ago we were bemoaning the drowsiness of the Empire. She has awakened now. I suppose, to carry on Mr. Hare’s simile, she has had a good shaking. Every one needs it in his day." "I’m sure _I_ don’t," said Dora Farquharson, breaking in. "Richard, do scold Lady Wereminster. She says I need shaking—I’m sure I don’t, do I?" "Oh, if we all got our deserts——" put in Hare somewhat grimly. "Now Richard needs shaking if you like," continued Dora, who had begun, since marriage, to consider herself something of a wit. "He is the most _impossible_ husband. Always off somewhere, at anybody’s beck and call but mine. A dear boy, of course, but hopeless to live with. If he had married an unamiable wife I don’t know what he would have done. When he’s at home, he always says he is too busy to be disturbed." "You don’t agree with the axiom that women ought to marry men they dislike because it is the only way of avoiding them, then?" said Lady Wereminster. Dora simpered. "Oh no. I was always romantic—just the opposite to Richard. Not that I want to complain of you, old boy." She leant across the table and tapped her husband on the arm. "You’re quite a good sort in your way; you don’t mind your little wife chaffing you occasionally, do you?" "No man is a hero to his—wife," Creagh misquoted gently. Lady Wereminster flashed. "Don’t tar us all with the same brush. There are wives and wives, remember; most of us ought to go through a training school for marriage. I’m sure useless subjects enough are taught in modern schools. ’How to be a good wife’ would be an attractive variety." "Modern girls’ schools are becoming more like boys’—delightful playgrounds."