"You can achieve the impossible with women, G., if you only appeal to, or wound, their vanity. You must never give orders to one unless she is in love with you--then she glories in obedience--but a modern wife can only be controlled either on the principle of the Irish-man's pig being driven towards Dublin when it was intended for Cork, or by a Machiavellian manipulation of her self-love." "And then the game is not worth the candle," Mr. Strobridge sighed with a little discouragement. "I wonder, Seraphim, what is worth while? Striving for the infinite, I suppose--certainly the finite things are but Dead Sea fruit." "Gerard, my poor boy, you make me fear, when you talk like that, that one day you will be profoundly in love!" "Heaven forbid!--It would upset my digestion. I was thirty-five last month and have to be careful!" And in her comfortable bed in Berkeley Square, Katherine Bush read "The Letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu" far into the night. Society had not altered in many respects since these hundred and sixty odd years ago, she thought! The tableaux were the greatest success and a large sum of money was secured for one of Lady Garribardine's pet charities. Time went on, Christmas was approaching. It was to be spent at Blissington Court, the place Lady Garribardine had inherited with the barony of d'Estaire from her father. Garribardine was a Scotch title while her ladyship was rabidly English. They would go down to Blissington and have a family party. Her three grandchildren (her daughter, Lady Mereton, was far away, the bored wife of a Colonial Governor), Gerard Strobridge and perhaps Lady Beatrice and the two old cousins with a young niece of theirs, and a stray man or two, and Mrs. Delemar--but no one could be sure who would turn up at the end. Katherine was not to have any holiday; she had come too recently, her employer explained to her, and the Christmas accumulations were quite beyond her power to tackle alone. Katherine was grateful--she looked forward to seeing this country home with pleasure. She had been kept unusually busy and so had very rarely seen any one except Her Ladyship. But one morning about ten days before they were to go down into Blankshire, Lady Garribardine informed her secretary she was to be given for the whole afternoon to Mr. Strobridge to type a quantity of letters about a new charity he was arranging for her. "My nephew dictates abominably, but he said that you had understood him so well that first evening when you arrived a month ago, that he has asked me to lend you to him to-day for this business, and I have consented. He will lunch here, so have plenty of paper ready for the afternoon." Then as Katherine was leaving the room, she handed her a ten-pound note.