I laughed to myself, speculating on the idyllic guilt-consciousness which must be flowing between these two. The baronet’s malapropism had followed curiously pat on my recent enlightenment. I recalled the stories of his ancient intimacy with Lord Skene, of his reputed co-partnership with that nobleman in a rollicking adventure or two. Were they, my lady and her pious accomplice, hearing, in their hearts, the first creaking of the wheels of retribution? Poor panic-struck conspirators! Yet I was sorry that Fate had imposed on Lady Skene so vulgar a confederate; for I could not but think the man vulgar, ordained priest as he was, and quite sincere, I believe, in his evangelicism. But, apart from him, and her subscription to his ugly phraseologic cant, she was so lovelily one of those presences whom age cannot wither (the rest of the quotation hardly applied to her); so perpetual a provocation--and aggravation--to the worshipper of beauty; so serene a thing, so coldly tantalising, so refinedly a figure for the sweet altitudes of romance! Ah, that she would make me her knight indeed--champion of a mother’s fame, dearer even than a wife’s! No need, then, to dread the consequences of an infamy atoned through love. I would have struck for--not against her. But she had preferred the inhuman part. So be it. I ended my scrutiny with an inward sigh, and turned it elsewhere. I had plentiful opportunity. No one addressed, or appeared even to consider me. Right opposite, Miss Christmas, who sat between Sir Maurice and Mr Dalston, was engaged in rallying her either neighbour charmingly. She was quite at her ease with both, confident of herself as the most attractive of social siderites--a star of unquestionable magnitude. And they responded, of course--men of the world, and quick in persiflage. They laughed at her butterfly sallies, and humoured them because she was pretty and an heiress They were patently captivated. “Ah!” I thought: “if you knew how this very morning she has been scrubbing my floor for me!” No one would have thought it possible. She was gay as a fairy; flower-complexioned; her hair like a misty aureole. A string of pearls was round her throat, and pearls were in her ears--“wicked little shells for recording scandal, and answering to it with pearls of price, too,” said Sir Maurice, after she had retorted upon some society calumny of his. “O!” she cried; “to compare my poor ears to oysters!” “Natives!” said Mr Dalston. “There are no oysters and no ears in all the world like our English breed.” She asked him seriously how he knew--if he had travelled much? “Far and wide,” he said, “and in all countries except Italy, I believe.” I wondered why he made, or had made, the reservation. “A sentiment,” he said, as if I had put the question to him. “I lost a dear friend there once.”