“Its oddity is but its honesty so far as I can see,” says my Lady Fanny yawning delicately. “’Tis surely more convenient to know how our friends are situate and ’tis their advantage also that this sincerity permits us to keep a friend we value.” “I yield to none in respect for Mrs. Fenton,” says my Lord angrily—“but at the same time would certainly forbid my wife her acquaintance now she has chose to ally herself openly with a man she can’t marry.” She looked at him with eyes provocative. “’Tis known your Lordship respected the lady.” How much, how little was meant? Impossible to say, but it left him confused and angry, and he therefore struck wild, as the men in the ring have it. “’Tis only a man can judge these points. The delicacy and weakness of the female mind are liable to gusts of sentiment, and your Ladyship’s ardent and generous nature——” “I have not found my nature ardent,” says the lady.— “Rather, I am given to judging men coolly—and women also. I have seen Mrs. Fenton in trial and prosperity and I judge her a woman of sense and spirit. I shall always esteem her friendship, and fortunately have no dictator to say me nay.” “Fortunately?” He raised his eyebrows a thought. “If your Ladyship says this in earnest it puts a period to all I would say.” “And what is that?” says she, softly. “I never held an opinion so savagely but what it could be changed by argument.” If my Lord had but guessed it, the ice was thin indeed now, and the Siren beckoning beyond, but vanity is blind whatever love may be, and he went onward with a smile of confidence very thinly veiled by a lover’s enforced humility. “My Lady Fanny, ’tis not so long since I believed I might flatter myself that you condescended to a little pleasure in my company. Was I wrong?” Her eyes, large and sweet, looked at him above her fan. “Indeed, no! ’Tis very true.” ’Twas so softly said that the colour kindled in his pale face. He drew his breath somewhat quicker. “A shadow—I scarce know what—fell between us, and by no will of mine I have not had the happiness that was once so often mine. We have been much apart the last weeks.” “We have been much apart,” she echoed, in a voice scarce audible. “It has been a trouble to me. I revolve night and day how to regain my lost ground and once more be acceptable to the only woman whose liking or distaste can make my heart to beat faster.” Her soft and pensive silence was an invitation to continue. Gentleness itself was the charming face now looking downward as though unable to meet the fire of his eyes. Sure my Lord knew all the symptoms of surrender! “If I confess”—he said gallantly, “that I was turned from the course of true love a moment—a moment only—by a wayside flower, my Lady Fanny, who knows the world and the thoughts of men she rules, will not think the crime unpardonable, since ’twas a fancy that never for a moment touched the heart where she only is secure.”