have dared not to be themselves, who ape the manners, echo the catchwords, and garb themselves in the elaborate ugliness, devised for the blind meek millions. As the Lady Sophia, now a little in advance of her companions, came stalking towards the steps, out from a little path that wound among the thick-growing laurels issued Paul Filey. He raised his eyes, and hurriedly thrust a small book into his pocket. The young lady paused, but only apparently to pat, or rather to administer an approving cuff to, the Bedlington terrier lying near the lower step. 'Well,' she said over her shoulder to Filey, 'our side gave a good account of itself that last round.' 'I was sure it would as soon as my malign influence was removed.' 'Yes; from the moment I took on Dick Farnborough, the situation assumed a new aspect. You'll _never_ play a good game, you know, if you go quoting Baudelaire on the links.' 'Poor Paul!' his hostess murmured to her niece, 'I always tremble when I see him exposed to Sophia's ruthless handling.' 'Yes,' whispered Hermione. 'She says she's sure he thinks of himself as a prose Shelley; and for some reason that infuriates Sophia.' With a somewhat forced air of amusement, Mr. Filey was following his critic up the steps, she still mocking at his 'drives' and the way he negotiated his bunkers. Arrived at the top of the little terrace, whose close-shorn turf was level with the flagged floor of the colonnade, Mr. Filey sought refuge near Hermione, as the storm-tossed barque, fleeing before the wind, hies swift to the nearest haven. Bending over the Bedlington, the Amazon remained on the top step, her long, rather good figure garbed in stuff which Filey had said was fit only for horse-blankets, but which was Harris tweed slackly belted by a broad canvas girdle drawn through a buckle of steel. '_Will_ you tell me,' he moaned in Hermione's ear, 'why the daughter of a hundred earls has the manners of a groom, and dresses herself in odds and ends of the harness room?' 'Sh! Somebody told her once you'd said something of that sort.' 'No!' he said. 'Who?' 'It wasn't I.' 'Of course not. But did she mind? What did she say, eh?' 'She only said, "He got that out of a novel of Miss Broughton's."' Filey looked a little dashed. 'No! Has Miss Broughton said it, too? Then there are more of them!' He glanced again at the Amazon. 'Horrible thought!' 'Don't be so unreasonable. She couldn't play golf in a long skirt and high heels!' 'Who _wants_ a woman to play golf?' Hermione gave him his tea with a smile. She knew with an absolute precision just how perfectly at that moment she herself was presenting the average man's picture of the ideal type of reposeful womanhood. As Lord John and the two other men, his companions, came up the steps in the midst of a discussion-- 'If you stop to argue, Mr. Farnborough,' said Lady John, holding out a cup, 'you won't have time for tea before you catch that train.'