“How isolated we are in this wide, wide world,” said Mrs Archibald to Lord Mowbray, a few days after the meeting in St Paul’s. They had rambled beyond Putney Bridge on a warm afternoon, and having reached Barnes Commons had seated themselves upon the soft grass. These two recalcitrants mourned pitifully over their present state and uncongenial surroundings, and, as they sat, related to each other in short, spasmodic sentences their grievous historiette of woe. Anecdote after anecdote escaped their lips, which recalled a past glory, a social Paradise for ever lost to them. Mrs Archibald described to her companion the scene in Lord Somerville’s library, when Temple had spoken what she had at the time considered such shameful words. However, she was beginning to have some dim understanding of what Sinclair had meant when he said that a blush at the right moment was a good thing; and she and Lord Mowbray felt somewhat uncomfortable as they realised the anomaly of recalling a clothed Society in their state of nature. For the first time in their artificial lives did their two hearts throb and long for something they had never known, and as they talked bitter tears trickled down their pale cheeks. When they had nearly finished their task of disentangling the skein of their complex past lives, they came to a full stop; and behind the mass of frivolity and petty sorrowings evoked by their anxious brain, they remarked in a corner, a dying Cupid, panting for life, whom they decided to revive. But here we must stop, for it does not do always to analyse the motives of human beings; suffice it to say that in their frenzied revolt against the uncongeniality of their surroundings, they fell into each other’s arms. Often a puerile cause has been the means of working out a momentous effect. But a remarkable thing occurred to these two recalcitrants, as they stood heart to heart, lip to lip: one by one their prejudices disappeared, the shallowness of their social past dawned upon them, and they now saw the meaning of their present condition. They returned to London, to the great world, as man and wife, and completely cured of their feverish delusion. * * * * * But where was _he_? Where, the little _dilettante_ who had for years carefully ministered to Society’s artistic needs? He had fed the _grand monde_ with small buns of his own making, and his flatterers and parasites had turned away from him in disgust, begging for some other bun of a better kneading. Towards the end of July, Lord Somerville and his faithful buffoon were walking in Half Moon Street when Lionel suddenly suggested that they should look up Montagu Vane. “As you like, my lord,” replied Danford; “I have not caught sight of the little figure for many days.”