* * *

Meantime, _ennui_ is reigning triumphantly in the drawing-room, more
conspicuously in the case of Dulce.

"Hey-day," she says, with a little, idle yawn; "how I do wish everybody
would not go out shooting, all at once. I think they might take it by
turns. But all men are selfish; they never consider how lonely we may
be."

"Why should one miss them?" says Julia, who in her soul considers every
moment unoccupied by the society of a man (that is a possible lover) as
time misspent.

"I don't know," says Dulce, candidly; "I am only sure of this, that I
want them always."

Portia says nothing.

"Well, certainly, at times they are amusing," says Mrs. Beaufort, as
though just awaking to the fact that now and again one _can_ find a man
with some wit or humor in him--"and I honestly confess"--with a little
laugh and a great assumption of candor--"that I wish even Stephen Gower
would drop in now and help us to pass away an hour or two."

"_Even_ Stephen Gower!" repeats Dulce. "Julia, what has that poor young
man done to you, that you should speak thus meanly of him? _Even_, what
an unkind word!"

"I don't believe I quite meant it, do you know," says Julia, relenting.
"I like Stephen Gower very much. By-the-by, what do you think of him? I
never yet heard you express an opinion, good or bad, about him. Do it
now."

Leaning back in her chair, Dulce slowly and thoughtfully raises her arms
in the air, with her fingers tipping each other, until presently they
fall indolently behind her head, where she lets them lie.

"Well, let me see," she says, lazily, "I think, perhaps, like Chaucer's
man, he is a 'veray parfit gentil knight.'"

Portia lifts her eyes from her painting and turns them slowly upon her
cousin; she regards her very silently for a moment or two, and then she
smiles, and leaning forward, opens her lips.

"'And of his port as meke as is a mayde,'" she says, mischievously,
purposely choosing the same poet for her quotation that Dulce had taken
for hers.

Miss Blount laughs.

"You, too, are severe upon our neighbor," she says, defending him more
from obstinacy than from real desire to see justice done. "I confess he
is at times a trifle too mild, but not effeminate, surely?"

"He is very handsome," says Portia, evasively.

"He has a charming mouth," says Dulce.

"I think you ought only to look at Roger's mouth," says Julia,
prudishly, whereupon Dulce shrugs her shoulders, impatien