ble, as conversations have a knack of doing,
and turned into channels which had less than nothing to do with
marriage. By a series of ingenious modulations Lord Reggie might
doubtless have contrived eventually to arrive at the key in which he
wanted to breathe out his love song; but the afternoon was too sultry
for ingenuities, and so they talked about the influence of Art on
Nature, and his anthem, until it was time to dress for dinner.

Lady Locke was a woman, and so it may be taken for granted that she
divined her companion's original intention, and was perhaps a little
amused at his failure to carry it into an act. But she manifested no
consciousness, and disappeared to her bedroom without displaying either
disappointment or triumph. She did, however, in fact know that Lord
Reggie meant to ask her the fateful question, and she had quite decided
now how she meant to answer it.

She had fallen into a curious sort of fondness for this tired, unnatural
boy, whom she considered as twisted as if he had been an Egyptian
cripple, zigzagging along a sandy track on his hands with his legs tied
round his neck; and two or three days ago she had even thought seriously
what she would say to him if he asked her to join lives with him
permanently. The motherly feeling had verged on something else, very
different; and when one day he carelessly touched her hand she had felt
her heart beating with a violence that was painfully natural. But now,
more than one incident that had since occurred had forged links in a new
chain of resolution that held her back from a folly. Although possibly
she hardly knew it, the scrap of conversation that she had chanced to
overhear between Lord Reggie and Tommy had really decided her to meet
the former with a refusal if he asked her to be his wife. It had opened
her eyes, and shown her in a flash the influence that a mere pose may
have upon others who are not posing. Her mother's heart flushed with a
heat of anger at the idea of Tommy, her dead soldier's son, developing
into the sort of young man whom she chose to christen "Modern"; and as
her heart flushed, unknown to her her mind really decided. She still
fancied that Lord Reggie was nothing more than a whimsical _poseur_,
bitten by the tarantula of imitation that preys upon weak natures. She
still fancied what she hoped. But incertitude strengthened resolve, and
she never intended to be Lady Reggie Hastings. Yet she meant Lord Reggie
to propose to