letting out their
perfume shyly, as pretty children let out their secrets. The carnations
nodded to one another against the stone wall that was clothed with
Espalier pear trees. The great cedar tree spread its arms out to catch
the soft warm breeze in its embrace. Over the tree-tops the swallows
were circling with their little characteristic air of discreet and
graceful frivolity. Tennyson would doubtless have addressed them. Lady
Locke did not even notice them. She was thinking, and too deeply to sit
down.

She was in that strange condition of mind that is called being angry
with one's self. A miniature civil war was raging within her, in which
two mental voices abused one another, and asked one another the most
strangely impertinent and inappropriate questions.

One said, "What on earth are you about?"

The other, "You have no right to ask. Mind your own business."

"You are letting yourself go in a way that is humiliating."

"Indeed, I am doing nothing of the kind."

"Why did you blush, then, when he merely touched your hand? He is simply
a thoughtless, foolish boy."

"I shan't talk to you any more."

But still the urgent conversation went on within. Lady Locke was, in
fact, very angry with herself, and considerably surprised at her own
girlishness. For that was what she called it, for want of a better name.
She was half disgusted at finding herself so young. Had life done
nothing more for her than this? Was she still liable to become an easy
prey to emotions that were undignified and inappropriate? It seemed as
if her heart were clouded while her mind remained clear, for she saw
Lord Reggie quite as he was, and yet she began to like him quite
absurdly. Why she was attracted by him she could not conceive. Was it
the swing of a Nature's pendulum? She had loved a hard, brusque man, and
had found a certain satisfaction in his blunt and not too considerate
affection; now she found something interesting in a nature that seemed
boyish to softness, that was no doubt full of absurdity, that was, so
people said, and he himself boasted, given over to vice, to the tasting
of emotions that is unfortunately so dangerous, often so inhuman in its
humanity. Perhaps it was really Lord Reggie's personal beauty or
prettiness that attracted her, for, say what one will, a pretty boy
steps easily into the good graces of even a strong-natured woman.
Perhaps it was his fleeting air of weakness combined with daring that
drew her to