Mr. Quincunx gazed at the utterer of these antinomian sentiments, with humorous interest. Dangelis gathered, from the twitching of his heavy moustache, that he was chuckling like a goblin. The queer fellow had a way of emerging out of his melancholy, at certain moments, like a badger out of his hole; and at such times he would bring the most ideal or speculative conversation down with a jerk to the very bed-rock of reality. “What’s amusing you so?” enquired the citizen of Ohio. “I was only thinking,” chuckled Mr. Quincunx, stroking his beard, and glancing sardonically at Lacrima, “that the real reason of your enjoying yourself at Nevilton House, is quite a different one from any you have mentioned.” Dangelis was for the moment quite confused. “Confound the fellow!” he muttered to himself, “I’m curst if I’m sorry he’s under the thumb of our friend Romer!” His equanimity was soon restored, however, and he covered his confusion by assuming a light and flippant air. “Ha! ha!” he exclaimed, “so you’re thinking I’ve been caught by this young lady’s cousin? Well! I don’t mind confessing that we get on beautifully together. But as for anything else, I think Miss Traffio will bear witness that I am quite as devoted to the mother as the daughter. But Gladys Romer must be admitted a very attractive girl,--mustn’t she Miss Traffio? I suppose our friend here is not so stern an ascetic as to refuse an artist like me the pleasure of admiring such adorable suppleness as your cousin possesses; such a--such a--” he waved his hand vaguely in the air, “such a free and flexible sort of grace?” Mr. Quincunx picked up a rough ash stick which lay on the ground and prodded the earth. His face showed signs of growing once more convulsed with indecent merriment. “Why do you use all those long words?” he said. “We country dogs go more straight to the point in these matters. Flexible grace! Can’t you confess that you’re bitten by the old Satan, which we all have in us? Adorable suppleness! Why can’t you say a buxom wench, a roguish wench, a playful wanton wench? We country fellows don’t understand your subtle artistic expressions. But we know what it is when an honest foreigner like yourself goes walking and talking with a person like Madame Gladys!” Glancing apprehensively at the American’s face Lacrima saw that her friend’s rudeness had made him, this time, seriously angry. She rose from her chair. “We must be getting back,” she said, “or we shall be late. I hope you and Mr. Dangelis will know more of one another, before he has to leave Nevilton. I’m sure you’ll find that you’ve quite a lot in common, when you really begin to understand each other.” The gravity and earnestness with which she uttered these words made both her companions feel a little ashamed. “After all,” thought the artist, “he is a typical Englishman.” “After all,” thought Mr. Quincunx, “I’ve always been told that Americans treat women as if they were made of tissue-paper.”