eater ardor into the mysteries of croquet. She has been known to
garden. As petal after petal floats down to earth she becomes artistic.
She reads, she talks Mr. Ruskin. She has her own views on Venice and its
Doges, her enthusiasm over Alps and artisans. The slow approach of
autumn brings her to politics. She is deep in Mr. Disraeli's novels, and
quotes Mr. Gladstone's Homer. She speculates on Charlie's chances for
the county. She knows why the Home Secretary was absent from the last
division. The drop of another petal warns her further afield. She is
manly now; she comes in at breakfast with her hair about her ears, and a
tale of the gallop she has had across country. She takes you over the
farm, and laughs at your ignorance of pigs. She peeps into the
odoriferous sanctum upstairs, and owns to a taste for cigarettes. She is
slightly horsey, and knows to a pound the value of her mare. Another
season, and she is interested in Church questions, and inquires what is
the next "new thing" at St. Andrew's. She adores Lord Shaftesbury, or
works frontals for St. Gogmagog. She collects for the Irish missions, or
misses an _entree_ on Eves. It is only as woman fades that we realize
the versatility, the inexhaustible resources, of woman.

The one scene, however, where the Fading Flower is perhaps seen at her
best is the County Archaeological Meeting. Of all rural delusions this is
perhaps the pleasantest, and if the name is forbidding, the Fading
Flower knows how little there is in a name. About half a dozen old
gentlemen, of course, take the thing in grand earnest. It is beyond
measure amusing to peep over the learned Secretary's shoulder, to see
the gray heads wagging and the spectacles in full play over the list of
promised papers, to watch the carefully planned details, the solemn
array of morning meetings, the grave excursions from abbey to castle,
from castle to church, the graver soirees where Dryasdust revels amidst
armor and knicknackery. It is even more amusing to see the Fading Flower
step in at the close of this learned preparation, and with a woman's
alchemy turn all this dust to gold. A little happy audacity converts the
morning meetings into convenient gatherings for the groups of the day,
the excursion resolves itself into a refined picnic, the learned soiree
becomes a buzzing conversazione.

Those who look forward with interest to woman's entrance into our
Universities may gather something of the results to be ex