"Because she takes her colour from what she preys upon; and she frets my garment! That is all, except the lady who bicycles and thinks Gleneira too hilly, and the man who takes photographs." "My dear Violet!" laughed Paul; "you are a witch." "Pardon me! I am an ass--all ears. And Bertie, Palmer, and Gordon come next week. I'm glad of that; one can't make bricks without mud. Straw requires the baser clay." "Straw! that is hardly complimentary to your sex!" "Pardon me again! the highest duty of a woman is to please man, and he is proverbially tickled by a straw. So now for the neighbours." "None." Violet Vane's eyebrows went up in derision. "There is no Sahara in Lorneshire, and you have been here for three weeks--or is it a month?" "To be accurate, a month and four days." "Dear me! what a long time it takes to put up curtains." "Very. I am sure those five minutes are over, Violet. Won't you come and sing for us?" "How--how dreadfully dull you must have been, Paul!" "Dreadfully. Blanche! will you try and persuade Mrs. Vane to sing to us--she is obdurate with me." Lady George, delighted at her brother's virtue in seeking to break up a _tête-a-tête_, was urgent in her appeals, and Mrs. Vane passed to the piano, airily. "There is music here," cried Lord George, officiously producing a book from the canterbury. Mrs. Vane took it with a gracious smile. "Bach! Corelli! This is yours, I suppose, Miss Woodward?" "No! I don't play," replied Alice, and Mrs. Vane turned instantly to the flyleaf. "There are no songs in that book," remarked Paul, black as thunder, laying his hands on the volume. "Not that it matters--for Mrs. Vane used not to need music----" "Nor does she now," retorted the little lady, laughing, as she sate down, saying as she did so, in an undertone, "Does Marjory Carmichael play Bach well, Paul? I hope so; he is dreadful when murdered." The reply, if reply there came, was lost in her sudden burst into one of those French _chansons_ in which laughter and tears are so closely interwoven that the mixture is apt to confuse the insular understanding. Her singing was, like herself, bright, gracious, fluent, with the rare perfection of training which conceals art. "She reminds me of Piccolomini," said Mr. Woodward, in pompous delight, feeling himself the better for the remark, after the fashion of men who are no longer afraid of being considered old. "A most charming little person altogether. Who is she?" "The widow of an Honourable--a Colonel--one of the Wentworths, I suppose," replied Lady George, yielding to the reflected glory of a successful guest. "She was very kind to Paul when he was ill in India, and we are all very fond of her. A most desirable friend for him to have."