d your ingenuousness
is a pistol you put to one's head, crying: your money or your life.'

'You look very comfortable, dear Mr. Lomas,' she retorted. 'Would you
mind very much if I asked you to put my footstool right for me?'

'I should mind immensely,' he smiled, without moving.

'Oh, please do,' she said, with a piteous little expression of appeal.
'I'm so uncomfortable, and my foot's going to sleep. And you needn't be
horrid to me.'

'I didn't know you really meant it,' he said, getting up obediently and
doing what was required of him.

'I didn't,' she answered, as soon as he had finished. 'But I know you're
a lazy creature, and I merely wanted to see if I could make you move
when I'd warned you immediately before that--I was a womanly woman.'

'I wonder if you'd make Alec MacKenzie do that?' laughed Dick,
good-naturedly.

'Good heavens, I'd never try. Haven't you discovered that women know by
instinct what men they can make fools of, and they only try their arts
on them? They've gained their reputation for omnipotence only on account
of their robust common-sense, which leads them only to attack
fortresses which are already half demolished.'

'That suggests to my mind that every woman is a Potiphar's wife, though
every man isn't a Joseph,' said Dick.

'Your remark is too blunt to be witty,' returned Mrs. Crowley, 'but it's
not without its grain of truth.'

Lucy, smiling, listened to the nonsense they talked. In their company
she lost all sense of reality; Mrs. Crowley was so fragile, and Dick had
such a whimsical gaiety, that she could not treat them as real persons.
She felt herself a grown-up being assisting at some childish game in
which preposterous ideas were bandied to and fro like answers in the
game of consequences.

'I never saw people wander from the subject as you do,' she protested.
'I can't imagine what connection there is between whether Mr. MacKenzie
would arrange Julia's footstool, and the profligacy of the female sex.'

'Don't be hard on us,' said Mrs. Crowley. 'I must work off my flippancy
before he arrives, and then I shall be ready to talk imperially.'

'When does Alec come?' asked Dick.

'Now, this very minute. I've sent a carriage to meet him at the station.
You won't let him depress me, will you?'

'Why did you ask him if he affects you in that way?' asked Lucy,
laughing.

'But I like him--at least I think I do--and in any case, I admire him,
and I'm sure he's good for me. A