“Why--why?” He spoke with some impatient irritability. “Are you really so dense? Why, because--if you must be instructed--any slackness on your part might rouse your wife’s suspicions. We want, if it’s to be a question of taking her off her guard, to lull her into a sense of false security; and the more infatuated you appear, the more careless of precaution will she become. Strange that I should have to teach _you_ sexual strategy.” He would not dismiss the whole suggestion at once, you see, as incredible and preposterous; he was too well versed in the thousand duplicities of which woman is capable ever to accept her innocence at more than its face value. Nor is mere youth a guarantee with her of harmlessness. The little two-inch viper can bite to poisonous effect the moment it is hatched from the egg. No, it was judicious, for the sake of all concerned, to attempt to establish the identity of this hermaphroditic individual. And he thought he could do it. He went to essay the experiment the next day. A little to his confusion he learned that his cousin, whom he had calculated upon finding out, was not yet departed, but was strolling, pending her horse’s arrival, in the garden. After a moment’s hesitation, he went to seek her there, and encountered her loitering about the paths which led down, among ordered parterres and hedged alleys, to the river-side. She looked very pretty in her scarlet riding habit _à la mode_, with the long-skirted coat, fashioned after a man’s, which was just then come into vogue, and the little plumed hat tilted over one ear; and the picture she made went straight down through his eyes to his heart. _Her_ eyes opened a shade as she turned to recognize him. “Are you coming to offer to ride with me?” she said. “Because, if you are----” “Yes?” he asked. She tossed her head suddenly, with a little shrug. “O! no matter. What the world can see the world will not suspect. Come, if you wish it.” “Meaning by the world, I suppose, your husband. Then you have thought better of my suggestion?” “What suggestion?” “That you should use me to stimulate his jealousy.” “I have thought of you as my kinsman and his friend.” “Is that a reproof, Kate Chesterfield?” She ruffled a box border with her little pointed toe, looking down the while. “Why should you think it so, cousin? You are a man of honour, are you not? And I have your own word for it your offer was a quite disinterested one.” “That may be; but to turn it to no better account than riding innocently in company is not the way to make it effective.” She did not reply for a moment, then looked him straight in the eyes. “What would you have us do?” “I could answer for one thing,” he said. His gaze was on a knot of rosebuds fastened in her bosom. “These walls are argus-eyed. Grant me a token from that sweet nest.” “And earn,” she said, “a credit I do not deserve. Why should I go out of my way so to damn myself?” “_He’ll_ hear of it.”