Rhoda spoke earnestly, almost passionately; and Lady Sarah, who had begun by laughing a little at her proposition, listened to the end of her speech with an unusually grave face. There was a short pause when Rhoda had finished; then the volatile lady recovered her spirits. “I wish I could,” she said, with a pretty little shrug. “Believe me, I only wish I had been ‘built that way,’ and that I could play Joan to Sir Robert’s Darby in the proper manner. But I really couldn’t, you know. I might play at it for a week, but I couldn’t keep it up. We don’t like the same things, and it would be foolish of me to pretend to, because he’d find me out. Just think what a hash I should make of it if I were to attempt to criticise his Romney and his two Gainsboroughs, his Fra Angelico and his old engravings! To me they seem all dull and old-fashioned and over-rated altogether. I pretend sometimes to see their beauties, but it’s only pretence, and it bores me to pretend. Don’t you see?” Rhoda was interested. If Lady Sarah had been acting before, she was obviously sincere now, and the girl felt for a moment rather sorry for the young married woman. “Well, can’t you teach him to be interested in the things that interest you?” she hazarded. She was surprised at her own boldness; but there was something more human, less artificial than usual in Lady Sarah’s manner that evening, which encouraged her to speak out. It was better to get right to the bottom of this human soul, if she could, now that she seemed to have the opportunity. Lady Sarah shook her pretty head. “Oh, dear no. When you lecture me----” “Oh, no, I didn’t!” interpolated Rhoda, shocked. “Yes, you did. I repeat, when you lecture me, you do it without understanding the position. Every one is sorry for Sir Robert, the grave, kind-hearted man married to a flighty little woman who doesn’t care about old masters or cracked teapots. But nobody takes the trouble to remember that there’s another side to the question, and that the flighty little woman is to be pitied too!” “Yes, I see,” admitted Rhoda. “It may be much more dignified, and a sign of a higher nature, and all that to prefer looking at pictures to dancing and motoring. But if one can’t help oneself, what is one to do? And it would, of course, be just as impossible to make Sir Robert take to waltzing and to interest him in polo and fox-hunting, as it would to make a bookworm and a blue-stocking of a poor ignoramus like me.” Rhoda could not help smiling sympathetically. This was the truth for once. Lady Sarah was, for the moment at least, genuinely sorry for herself, and she made Rhoda sorry too. “But you know what he was like in the first place,” objected she timidly.