od-nature."

"It would be to make me the proudest, and--for that one brief hour at
least--the happiest of men," protested Lord Mallow, looking intensely
sentimental.

"And you will deal frankly with me? You will not flatter? You will be
as severe as an Edinburgh reviewer?"

"I will be positively brutal," said Lord Mallow. "I will try to imagine
myself an elderly feminine contributor to the 'Saturday,' looking at
you with vinegar gaze through a pair of spectacles, bent upon spotting
every fleck and flaw in your work, and predetermined not to see
anything good in it."

"Then I will trust you!" cried Lady Mabel, with a gush. "I have longed
for a listener who could understand and criticise, and who would be too
honourable to flatter. I will trust you, as Marguerite of Valois
trusted Clement Marot."

Lord Mallow did not know anything about the French poet and his royal
mistress, but he contrived to look as if he did. And, before he ran
away to the House presently, he gave Lady Mabel's hand a tender little
pressure which she accepted in all good faith as a sign manual of the
compact between them.

They met in the Row next morning, and Lord Mallow asked--as earnestly
as if the answer involved vital issues--when he might be permitted to
hear those interesting poems.

"Whenever you can spare time to listen," answered Lady Mabel, more
flattered by his earnestness than by all the adulatory nigar-plums
which had been showered upon her since her _debut_. "If you have
nothing better to do this afternoon----"

"Could I have anything better to do?"

"We won't enter upon so wide a question," said Lady Mabel, laughing
prettily. "If committee-rooms and public affairs can spare you for an
hour or two, come to tea with mamma at five. Ill get her to deny
herself to all the rest of the world, and we can have an undisturbed
hour in which you can deal severely with my poor little efforts."

Thus it happened that, in the sweet spring weather, while Roderick was
on the stand at Epsom, watching the City and Suburban winner pursue his
meteor course along the close-cropped sward, Lord Mallow was sitting at
ease in a flowery fauteuil in the Queen Anne morning-room at
Kensington, sipping orange-scented tea out of eggshell porcelain, and
listening to Lady Mabel's dulcet accents, as she somewhat monotonously
and inexpressively rehearsed "The Tragedy of a Sceptic Soul."

The poem was long, and, sooth to say, passing dreary; and, much as he