And as Roland listened to the varying interpretations of the summons which, during the absence of her charge, Mrs. Metuchen's riotous imagination had found time to conceive, "Thorold has told," he repeated to himself, "but he has told too late." After a morning such as that, an afternoon on a piazza is apt to drag. Of this Roland was conscious. Moreover, he had become aware that his opportunities were now narrowly limited; and presently, as Mrs. Metuchen's imaginings subsided and ceased, he asked the girl whether, when dinner was over, she would care to take a drive. Protest who may, at heart every woman is a match-maker; and Mrs. Metuchen was not an exception. In addition to this, she liked family-trees, she was in cordial sympathy with good-breeding, and Roland, who possessed both, had, through attentions which women of her age appreciate most, succeeded in detaining her regard. In conversation, whenever Justine happened to be mentioned, she had a habit of extolling that young woman--not beyond her deserts, it is true, but with the attitude of one aware that the girl had done something which she ought to be ashamed of, yet to which no one was permitted to allude. This attitude was due to the fact that she suspected her, and suspected that everyone else suspected her, of an attachment for her cousin Guy. Now Guy Thorold had never appealed to Mrs. Metuchen. He was not prompt with a chair; when she unrolled her little spangle of resonant names he displayed no eagerness in face or look. Such things affect a woman. They ruffle her flounces and belittle her in her own esteem. As a consequence, she disliked Guy Thorold; from the heights of that dislike she was even wont to describe him as Poke--a word she could not have defined had she tried, but which suggested to her all the attributes of that which is stupid and under-bred. Roland, on the other hand, seemed to her the embodiment of just those things which Thorold lacked, and in the hope that he might cut the cousin out she extolled him to her charge in indirect and subtle ways. You young men who read this page mind you of this: if you would succeed in love or war, be considerate of women who are no longer young. They ask but an attention, a moment of your bountiful days, some little act of deference, and in exchange they sound your praises more deftly than ever trumpeter or beat of drums could do. But because Mrs. Metuchen had an axe of her own to grind was not to her mind a reason why she should countenance a disregard of the Satanic pomps of that which the Western press terms Etiquette. And so it happened that, when Roland asked Justine whether she would care to drive, before the girl could answer, the matron stuck her oar in: "Surely, Mr. Mistrial, you cannot think Miss Dunellen could go with you alone. Not that _I_ see any impropriety in her doing so, but there is the world."