"Läo was always a fool, but I believed even the sense of a rabbit would have kept her from this!" "They are madly in love, dear Sarah!" old Gwendoline d'Estaire said sentimentally. Her ladyship snorted. "Tut, tut! Läo is forty-two years old and the boy not more than six and twenty, sixteen years between them! Quite an immaterial discrepancy while he remained a lover--but a menace which even the strongest brain cannot combat when the creature turns into a husband. The situation is ridiculous at once. It means that the woman has to spend her time not only fighting old age as we all have to do, but watching for every sign of weariness in the youth, trembling at every fresh wrinkle in herself, and always on the tiptoe of anxiety, so that she loses whatever charm lured the poor child into her net." "But really Läo had made it so evident--the affair--perhaps she thought----" "That a second wedding ring was essential! Ridiculous nonsense, Gwendoline! We are not of the _bourgeoisie_--there is an epidemic of these rich widows rushing these penniless young men into matrimony. No one objects to their amusing themselves, but these respectable unions offend the sensibilities at once from their obvious unsuitableness. The woman loses prestige--almost caste, I was going to say. The man grows either sheepish or intolerably insolent, and if you notice, the pair eventually drop out of all agreeable society." "How awful to contemplate!" and Lady Beatrice sighed sadly. "To think that after one had _pretended_ for years that one was full of emotions and sex and horrible things, one should succumb to them really--It is a cruel retribution--Gerard, aren't you interested?" For Mr. Strobridge had raised a whimsical eyebrow. "Perfectly thrilled. I am amply revenged for her indifference to me!" "Is it not possible for them to be happy, then?" Katherine whispered to him in the din of a chorus of remarks the news had provoked. "They have about a hundred to one chance for a few months; then either will suffer, probably both. Oh! the intolerable bond of matrimony!--Unless, of course----" Katherine shrugged her shoulders. "Yes, I suppose so, if one was not quite sure what the reason was that one was marrying for, and had not weighed it and found out if it would be worth while or no." "What will you marry for?" "Contentment, I expect." "And what is contentment--only the obtaining of one's heart's desire." "I shall not marry unless it is to obtain my heart's desire," and that sphinxlike smile grew round her mouth, which always roused Gerard Strobridge's curiosity. After all this time, he could never quite fathom what was going on inside that clever brain. "I refuse to think about it--Let us talk about something else--books you have been reading--something I can do for you."