"I do not quite know. I have become what she would have had me. To test her, I aped the mincing extravagance of the typical town-gallant. She was surprised at first, and then angry. That pleased me. I thought: Cleone does not like the thing I am; she would prefer the real me. Then I waited on Lady Malmerstoke. Cleone was there. She was, as you say, quite changed. I suppose she was charming; it did not seem so to me. She laughed and flirted with her fan; she encouraged me to praise her beauty; she demanded the madrigal I had promised her. When I read it she was delighted. She asked her aunt if I were not a dreadful, flattering creature. Then came young Winton, who is, I take it, _amoureux à en perdre la tête_. To him she was all smiles, behaving like some Court miss. Since then she has always been the same. She is kind to every man who comes her way, and to me. You say you do not understand? Nor do I. She is not the Cleone I knew, and not the Cleone I love. She makes herself as--Clothilde de Chaucheron. _Charmante, spirituelle_, one to whom a man makes trifling love, but not the one a man will wed." He spoke quietly, and with none of his usual sparkle. Sir Maurice leaned forward, striking his fist on his knee. "But she is not that type of woman, Philip! That's what I can't understand!" Philip shrugged slightly. "She is not, you say? I wonder now whether that is so. She flirted before, you remember, with Bancroft." "Ay! To tease you!" "_Cela se peut._ This time it is not to tease me. That I know." "But, Philip, if it is not for that, why does she do it?" "Presumably because she so wishes. It is possible that the adulation she receives has flown to her head. It is almost as though she sought to captivate me." "Cleone would never do such a thing!" "Well, sir, you will see. Come with us this afternoon. Tom and I are bidden to take a dish of Bohea with her ladyship." "Sally has already asked me. I shall certainly come. _Mordieu_, what ails the child?" Philip rubbed some rouge on to his cheeks. "If you can tell me the answer to that riddle, sir, I shall--thank you." "You do care, Philip? Still?" He watched Philip pick up the haresfoot with fingers that trembled a little. "Care?" said Philip. "I--yes, sir. I care--greatly." * * * * * Lady Malmerstoke glanced critically at her niece. "You are very gay, Clo," she remarked. "Gay?" cried Cleone. "How could I be sober, Aunt Sally? I am enjoying myself so much!" Lady Malmerstoke pushed a bracelet farther up one plump arm. "H'm!" she said. "It's very unfashionable, my dear, not to say _bourgeois_." "Oh, fiddle!" answered Cleone. "Who thinks that?" "I really don't know. It is what one says. To be in the mode you must be fatigued to death." "Then I am not in the mode," laughed Cleone. "Don't forget, Aunt, that I am but a simple country-maid!" She swept a mock curtsey. "No," said her ladyship placidly. "One is not like to forget it."