"I'll explain," she said. "You know we're all expected to know something about everything nowadays, and it's such a bore reading up things. I'm going to compile a little volume of definitions. I shall sell it at a guinea a copy, pay all my debts, and become quite respectable again." Deyes shook his head. His attitude was scarcely sympathetic. "My dear Lady Peggy, what nonsense!" he declared. "Respectable, indeed! I call it positively pandering to the middle classes!" Lady Peggy looked doubtful. "It is a horrid word, isn't it?" she admitted, "but it would be lovely to make some money. Of course, I haven't absolutely decided how to spend it yet. It does seem rather a waste, doesn't it, to pay one's debts, but think of the luxury of feeling one could do it if one wanted to!" "There's something in that," Deyes admitted. "But an encyclopædia! My dear Lady Peggy, you don't know what you're talking about. I've got one somewhere, I know. It came in a van, and it took two of the men to unload it." Lady Peggy laughed softly. "Oh! I don't mean that sort, of course," she declared. "I mean just a little gilt-edged text book, bound in morocco, you know, with just those things in it we're likely to run up against. Radium, for instance. Now every one's talking about radium. Do you know what radium is?" Deyes swung his eyeglass carefully by its black riband. "Well," he admitted, "I've a sort of idea, but I'm not very good at definitions." "Of course not," Lady Peggy declared triumphantly. "When it comes to the point, you see what a good idea mine is. You turn to my textbook," she added, turning the pages over rapidly, "and there you are. Radium! 'A hard, rare substance, invented by Mr. Gillette to give tone to his bachelor parties.' What do you think of that?" "Wonderful!" Deyes declared solemnly. "Where do you get your information from?" "Oh! I poke about in dictionaries and things, and ask every one questions," Lady Peggy declared airily. "Would you like to hear some more?" "Our hostess is beckoning to me," Deyes answered, rising. "I expect she wants some bridge." "I'm on," Lady Peggy declared cheerfully. "Whom shall we get for a fourth?" "Wilhelmina has found him already," Deyes declared. "It's the new young man, I think." Lady Peggy shrugged her shoulders. "The agent's son?" she remarked. "I shouldn't have thought that he would have cared about our points." "He can afford it for once in a way, I should imagine," Deyes answered. "I can't understand, though----" He stopped short. She looked at him curiously. "Is it possible," she murmured, "that there exists anything which Gilbert Deyes does not understand?" "Many things," he answered; "amongst them, why does Wilhelmina patronize this young man? He is well enough, of course, but----" he shrugged his shoulders expressively; "the thing needs an explanation, doesn't it?"