ou all the time we were at luncheon."

"I ought not to have been off duty so long," Mr. Vawdrey answered
meekly; "but if you could only imagine the stupidity of those
bricklayers! The day before yesterday I found half-a-dozen stalwart
fellows sitting upon a wall, with their hands in their corduroy
pockets, smoking short pipes, and, I believe, talking politics. They
pretended to be at a standstill because their satellites--their _ames
damnees_, the men who hold their hods and mix their mortar--had not
turned up. 'Don't disturb yourselves, gentlemen,' I said. 'There's
nothing like taking things easy. It's a time-job. I'll send you the
morning papers and a can of beer.' And so I did, and since that day, do
you know, the fellows have worked twice as hard. They don't mind being
bullied; but they can't stand chaff."

"What an interesting bit of character," said Lady Mabel, with a faintly
perceptible sneer. "Worthy of Henri Constant."

"May I come to the Duchess's kettledrum?' asked Lord Mallow humbly.

"By all means," answered Mabel. "How fond you gentlemen pretend to be
of afternoon tea, nowadays. But I don't believe it is the tea you
really care for. It is the gossip you all like. Darwin has found out
that the male sex is the vain sex: but I don't think he has gone so far
as to discover another great truth. It is the superior sex for whom
scandal has the keenest charm."

"I have never heard the faintest hiss of the serpent slander at the
Duchess's tea-table," said Lord Mallow.

"No; we are dreadfully behind the age," assented Lady Mabel. "We
continue to exist without thinking ill of our neighbours."

They all three sauntered towards the house, choosing the sheltered
ways, and skirting the broad sunny lawn, whose velvet sward, green even
in this tropical July, was the result of the latest improvements in
cultivation, ranging from such simple stimulants as bone-dust and
wood-ashes to the last development of agricultural chemistry. Lady
Mabel and her companions were for the most part silent during this
leisurely walk home, and, when one of them hazarded an observation, the
attempt at conversation had a forced air, and failed to call forth any
responsive brilliancy in the others.

The Duchess looked provokingly cool and comfortable in her
morning-room, which was an airy apartment on the first-floor, with a
wide window opening upon a rustic balcony, verandahed and trellised,
garlanded with passion-flowers and Australian