"To Dicky, then, if you will; but I was attempting to lay down the general rule which Dicky illustrates. A little gentle notice taken of the child not only appeals to the man as womanly in itself, but delicately conveys to him that the past is, to some extent, condoned. He has sown his wild oats: he is, so to speak, _range_; but he is none the less grateful for some assurance--" Lady Caroline's discourse had whiled the way back to Sabines, to the drawing-room; and here Diana wheeled round on her with the question, sudden and straight,-- "Do you suppose that Cousin Oliver is _range_, as you call it?" "My child, we have every reason to believe so." "Then what do you make of this?" The girl took up a small volume that lay on the top of the harpsichord, and thrust it into her mother's hands. "Eh? What?" Lady Caroline turned the book back uppermost and spelled out the title through her eyeglass. "'Ovid'--he's Latin, is he not? Dear, I had no notion that you kept up your studies in that--er-- tongue." "I do not. I have forgot what little I learned of it, and that was next to nothing. But open the book, please, at the title-page." "I see nothing. It has neither book-plate nor owner's signature." (Indeed Ruth never wrote her name in her books. She looked upon them as her lord's, and hers only in trust.) "The title-page, I said. You are staring at the flyleaf." "Ah, to be sure--" Lady Caroline turned a leaf. "Is this what you mean?" She held up a loose sheet of paper covered with writing. "Read it." The elder lady found the range of her eyeglass and conned--in silence and without well grasping its purport--the following effusion:-- Other maids make Love a foeman, Lie in ambush to defeat him; I alone will step to meet him Valiant, his accepted woman. Equal, consort in his car, Ride I to his royal war. Victims of his bow and targe, Yet who toyed with lovers' quarrels, Envy me my braver laurels! Lord! thy shield of shadow large Lift above me, shout the charge! "Well?" "I make nothing of it," owned Lady Caroline. "It appears to be poetry of a sort--probably some translation from the Latin author." "You note, at least, that the handwriting is a woman's?" "H'm, yes," Lady Caroline agreed. "Nothing else?" "Dear, you speak in riddles." "It _is_ a riddle," said Diana. "Take the first letter of each line, and read them down, in order." "O, L, I, V, E, R V, Y, E, L, L," spelled Lady Caroline, and lowered her eyeglass. "My dear, as you say, this cannot be a mere coincidence." "_Did_ I say that?" asked Diana. "But who can it be, or have been? . . . That Dance woman, perhaps? She was infatuated enough." "It was not she," said Diana positively. "_Somebody_ can tell us. . . . That Mr. Silk, for instance." "Ah, you too think of him?" "As a clergyman--and to some extent a boon companion of Oliver's--he would be likely to know--"