My Lord Kilcroney had none of your nasty prudish minds that think harm of a kiss. To salute a rosy cheek, or clasp a trim waist came as natural to him as to toss off a tankard of brown ale, or light his long clay, or sit in the sunshine. And indeed, my Lady, knowing him, had as a rule an indulgence for such peccadilloes; the merest shrug of the shoulders or a “Fie for shame, my Lord!” in a voice scarce more indignant than that in which she chid the littler Denis for putting his fingers in the sugar bowl. But the mischief was in it, this summer at Weymouth, Kitty being in attendance on her Royals, that such a change should come over the whole spirit of the whilom sensible spouse. Such a hullaballoo over a kiss! If ever there was anything likely to drive a really faithful husband to desperate courses, it was this unexpected, undeserved, severity. Unfortunately he had been unlucky in his choice of partner for the peccadillo. Molly Lafone’s smooth cheek, fine grained as a geranium leaf, and as delicately rouged as a miniature, Molly Lafone’s cheek, ethereally tinted, had the quality of pitch in the eyes of the other ladies, and the touch of it defiled. My Lord, puffing at his clay in the County Club at Weymouth, with an air half humorous, half defiant, and thinking back on that same cheek with a certain complacence, might perhaps have altered his opinion on the whole matter had he been aware how neatly Mrs. Lafone had timed the episode for the passage of the Queen’s equipage. They had met, quite accidentally, on the parade. “Oh, my Lord Kilcroney,” quoth she. “Is it indeed you?” Her victim as good-humoured and devil-may-care as you please, brought himself up with a wheel and a flourish. Molly was clasping her hands. It was her trick to go like a snowdrop in the dawn, when the rest of womanhood flared carnation on the cheek. Her small faintly tinted face was absolutely irradiated. “Is it indeed you, Denis Kilcroney? I declare ’tis like meeting the sun in a fog to see you! Oh, your kind look, my Lord, and your good smile! This place----” She broke off. “How now!” said he, gallantly saluting a pearl-like inch of wrist between rumpled glove and race ruffle. “What’s wrong with the place, Mrs. Lafone? Troth, and I thought it was the St. James’s over again, for every ten steps don’t I come across a friend! And this is the best meeting of all,” he added, with another bow, another kiss, and a still broader smile, for--deuce take him!--the little thing had been monstrous glad to see him, there was no mistake about that, and he was nothing if not responsive. “And as for the sun,” he went on, straightening himself, and gazing down at her rather fatuously. “Isn’t the great orb of Royalty shining on Weymouth this minute?”