uredly. She was not easily put out of
countenance. "What woman doesn't?" she asked.

"I don't, and I am a woman, surely."

"Ah, but an exceptional woman," her cousin rallied her affectionately,
tapping the shapely white arm that protruded from a foam of lace. And
Lady O'Moy, to whom words never had any but a literal meaning, set
herself to purr precisely as one would have expected. Complacently she
discoursed upon the perfection of her own endowments, appealing ever and
anon to her husband for confirmation, and O'Moy, who loved her with all
the passionate reverence which Nature working inscrutably to her ends so
often inspires in just such strong, essentially masculine men for just
such fragile and excessively feminine women, afforded this confirmation
with all the enthusiasm of sincere conviction.

Thus until Mullins broke in upon them with the announcement of a visit
from Count Samoval, an announcement more welcome to Lady O'Moy than to
either of her companions.

The Portuguese nobleman was introduced. He had attained to a degree
of familiarity in the adjutant's household that permitted of his being
received without ceremony there at that breakfast-table spread in the
open. He was a slender, handsome, swarthy man of thirty, scrupulously
dressed, as graceful and elegant in his movements as a fencing master,
which indeed he might have been; for his skill with the foils was, a
matter of pride to himself and notoriety to all the world. Nor was it by
any means the only skill he might have boasted, for Jeronymo de Samoval
was in many things, a very subtle, supple gentleman. His friendship
with the O'Moys, now some three months old, had been considerably
strengthened of late by the fact that he had unexpectedly become one
of the most hostile critics of the Council of Regency as lately
constituted, and one of the most ardent supporters of the Wellingtonian
policy.

He bowed with supremest grace to the ladies, ventured to kiss the fair,
smooth hand of his hostess, undeterred by the frosty stare of O'Moy's
blue eyes whose approval of all men was in inverse proportion to their
approval of his wife--and finally proffered her the armful of early
roses that he brought.

"These poor roses of Portugal to their sister from England," said his
softly caressing tenor voice.

"Ye're a poet," said O'Moy tartly.

"Having found Castalia here," said, the Count, "shall I not drink its
limpid waters?"

"Not, I hope, while there's an