(This is what she thinks of Sydney.) —“torn by the sight of this hopelessly stodgy, commonplace young man—” (I know that this is how she sums up my friend Mr. Waters.) —“being preferred to himself! Ah, Love is blind!” (Meaning me.) “And people never seem to recognize the right man until it’s too late.” (Deluded little donkey!) We had tea. What a meal! “You do take sugar in it, don’t you, Tots?” plaintively from Cicely, with a side-effect of, “She’s so deplorably altered in everything else, I don’t know what any of her tastes may be now!” “Does Mr. Waters take it?” (To _me_!) “Not any, thanks,” from the Governor. “Only milk.” Cicely’s glance commented silently, “Ah! Incompatibility latent here! An unhappy marriage!” Why, why hadn’t I said I’d like to go to Rumpelmayer’s, or Lyons’—or Lockhart’s? Anything rather than this funereal feast, with Sydney Vandeleur as the skeleton thereat! Even if he’d remained a voiceless skeleton! But, cheered by all the subtle encouragement and moral support from his pretty hostess—I must say Cicely was looking prettier than ever!—Sydney began to recover a little, relaxed his first pose of open broken-heartedness, and proceeded to _talk_. Nobody else did. Mr. Waters looked as if nothing was going to force his lips asunder again. I didn’t want to say anything. Cicely was quite happy to listen. And Sydney held forth. He began with—“Have you been to—” and “Haven’t you seen—” various picture-galleries and pieces of an “advanced” type. “What! Not seen ‘_The Keening of Deidre_,’ even? But why not?” he protested to me, lolling back in that chair as if he didn’t possess a spine. “Oh, it’s such a wonderful thing; so subtle and so brutal at the same time. And one’s sure of seeing everyone one wants to see, in the pit; a positive At Home of them. Better than the dear old palmy days of the Sicilians. I have been three times. The whole effect is so—so sculptured! You would love it! Oh, you must take her”—this to my official _fiancé_, who sat silent and non-committal and very bolt-upright. “You really must not miss it. It is coming off next week.” “I’m going away next week,” said I. “Oh, yes? To the country?” “To Wales.” “Ah, Wales! It used to be so wild and charming and remote—almost as good as those perfectly untrodden tracts we still get in the West of Ireland. But it’s frightfully overdone now,” complained Sydney. “One doesn’t know if it’s the fault of Lloyd George, or the picture postcards, or that appalling little railway up Snowdon, but Wales has become so _obvious_. When I’m going over to Ballycool, do you know, I have to read all the way in the train between Chester and Holyhead, in terror lest I should inadvertently catch sight of any of the ‘scenery.’ I assure you”—to Cicely—“that when you get that Snowdon Range, cut out in purple cardboard jig-saws against what the dear tourists call ‘a glorious sunset’ it’s almost exactly like a landscape in the Academy!”