But what was it that gave permission to Mr. Austin de Vere to join the throng? He wrote poetry. He followed her as close as a rhyme in a couplet. He never wrote her any, for which she was pleased to be flatteringly thankful. There are some things that cannot be set down in verse even by the greatest, and the poet De Vere acknowledged this humbly. He had the character of being the most conceited and immitigable ass in England, and when he was with Penelope he was as humble as a puppy in leash. There was something great in his mighty subjection. Not even Goby, late of the Guards, was so mitigable and so mitigated when Pen was by. And Goby’s V.C. was almost as much valued by him as his clothes and boots. He gained it by a fit of angry rage, such as had led him to pay several sovereigns at a desk in a back office at a police-station, and came out of his temper to discover he was a hero. So much for luck when a big man, with the quality and temper of a bull, gets into a row in a sangar without any police to stay his hand. "As for that De Vere," said Goby, "why, I could crush him with one hand." "And he could make you sore with a few words," said Penelope. "He couldn’t," bragged Goby. Penelope smiled. "No, perhaps he couldn’t," she said, pensively, and Goby was pleased with her opinion of his bull’s hide. Europa had at any rate scratched him. He indicated the sea of matrimony with inarticulate bellows. But of course he was really quite possible. As Chloe Cadwallader said, his boots were inspiration, polished, and his Christian name was Plantagenet. He had some obscure right to it. Then there was Lord Bramber. Some folks said if she married any one, she would marry Bramber, because his father was the Earl of Pulborough. They forgot all the rest of the aristocratic mob. If any title pleased her democratic soul, she could pick strawberries. One senile and one merely silly duke pursued her panting. But she certainly liked Bramber, and showed her partiality for him or her unpartiality with frankness. She had hopes of him, though he appeared hopeless now at the age of twenty-seven. She maintained that men were half their age and women twice it, at the least. "Dear Titania is ninety," said Penelope, "and Guardy is twenty-five. Lord Bramber will perhaps think of doing some work when he is fifteen." There came with these, with and not after, Jimmy Carew, who was an A.R.A. He painted portraits, and talked about art with eloquence till no one, even an artist, could guess what he meant. But he believed things with such faith that many of his fair sitters agreed with him. He was the best looking of the whole "horde," as Titania called Pen’s adorers.