him. She could not tell. She only knew, as she walked among
the shy roses, that the casual touch of his hand--a hand, too, that was
very like a girl's--had communicated to her quite a startlingly strong
emotion. Alas! the motherly feeling seemed to have had its little day,
and to have been swept off the stage on which her mental drama was being
acted. It had played a principal part, but now an understudy appeared,
more full-blooded, stronger, wilder. Lady Locke was very angry with
herself among the roses that morning.

She knew she was a fool, but she knew also that she had no intention of
making a fool of herself. She had too much character, too much
observation, both of others and of herself, to do that.

Madame Valtesi joined her presently, leaning on her cane and fanning
herself rather languidly.

"Nature has gone into quite a vulgar extreme to-day," she said. "It is
distinctly too hot for propriety. One wants to sit about in one's
skeleton. I wonder what Mr. Amarinth's skeleton would be like--not quite
nice, I fancy. I have had bad news by the post."

"Indeed! I am sorry."

"My dearest enemy has written to say that she is going to marry again. I
did not wish her so much ill as that. It is really curious. If some
people have been chastised with whips, they pine after scorpions. Women
have such an unwholesome craving to experience the keenest edge of pain,
that I believe many of them would cut themselves with knives, like the
priests of Baal, if they could not get a husband to perform the
operation for them."

"You speak rather bitterly of your sex."

"Do I? A nineteenth-century cynic minus vitriol would be like a goose
minus sage and onions. I prefer to be a goose with those alleviations of
the goose nature. My enemy married for money the first time, now she is
going in for celebrity. The chief drawback to celebrity is that it is
generally dressed in mourning; a kind of half mourning when it is
notoriety only, and absolute weeds when it is fame. Why should
cleverness and crape go together? People are so frightfully solemn when
they have made a name, that it is like doing a term of hard labour to be
with them for five minutes. Stupidity gives you a ticket-of-leave, and
sheer foolish ignorance is complete emancipation, without even police
supervision."

"I suppose it is always difficult not to take oneself seriously."

"I do not find it so. My mental proceedings generally strike me as the
best joke I know,