omanhood. I could not forgive the woman, let her
be duchess or peasant, who could show any man such great love, who could
lay herself out so deliberately to win a man."

She looked at him gravely. He continued:

"Beauty is very charming, I grant--as are grace and talent; but the
chief charm to me of a woman is her modesty. Do you not agree with me,
Philippa?"

"Yes," she replied, "most certainly I do; but, Norman, you are hard upon
us. Suppose that, woman loves a man ever so truly--she must not make any
sign?"

"Any sign she might make would most certainly, in my opinion, lessen her
greatest charm," he said.

"But," she persisted, "do you not think that is rather hard? Why must a
woman never evince a preference for the man she loves?"

"Woman should be wooed--never be wooer," said Lord Arleigh.

"Again I say you are hard, Norman. According to you, a woman is to break
her heart in silence and sorrow for a man, rather than give him the
least idea that she cares for him."

"I should say there is a happy medium between the Duchess of Gerolstein
and a broken heart. Neither men nor women can help their peculiar
disposition, but in my opinion a man never more esteems a woman than
when he sees she wants to win his love."

He spoke with such perfect freedom from all consciousness that she knew
the words could not be intended for her; nevertheless she had learned a
lesson from them.

"I am like yourself, Norman," she said; "I do not care for the play at
all; we will go home," and they left the house before the Grand Duchess
had played her part.

Chapter IX.

Philippa L'Estrange thought long and earnestly over her last
conversation with Lord Arleigh. She had always loved him; but the
chances are that, if he had been devoted to her on his return, if he had
wooed her as others did, she would have been less _empressee_. As it
was, he was the only man she had not conquered, the only one who
resisted her, on whom her fascinations fell without producing a magical
effect. She could not say she had conquered her world while he was
unsubdued. Yet how was it? She asked herself that question a hundred
times each day. She was no coquette, no flirt, yet she knew she had but
to smile on a man to bring him at once to her feet; she had but to make
the most trifling advance, and she could do what she would. The Duke of
Mornton had twice repeated his offer of marriage--she had refused him.
The Marquis of Langland, the grea