e say this afternoon,--do tell me!"

"He said you were too young to be always talking all sorts of deep
things with a man of forty."

Leonetta laughed. "Well, I like that!" she cried. "I wasn't too young
last night, was I?"

"Why, what happened last night?" Vanessa enquired, without revealing a
trace of envy in her inscrutable Jewish eyes.

"Oh, well, never mind. I suppose I ought to say the night before last.
But, anyhow, Lord Henry is not forty. I asked him. He's only
thirty-three."

"Well, I'm only repeating what Denis said," Vanessa observed.

"I know one thing, Lord Henry's jolly clever. Do you know what it is to
feel your skin creep all over while anybody's talking to you even about
simple subjects?"

"Yes--rather!"

"Well, that's what Lord Henry makes me feel. And what's more, he has a
ripping way of putting things scientifically to you. He never flatters
you. He proves to you on scientific principles that you are one of the
best,--do you understand?"

Vanessa was delighted, and, strange as it may seem, so was Leonetta; an
unusual coincidence of sentiment in these two flappers--for Vanessa had
not long ceased from being a flapper--which foreboded no good to any
one.

* * * * *

The following day broke dull and wet for the inhabitants of Brineweald,
and for the first hour of the morning the rain was sufficiently heavy to
keep the two households apart.

Lord Henry was therefore thrown on the company of Sir Joseph's party,
and he entertained them, or perhaps disturbed them, as they digested
their breakfast, by discussing various aspects of English matrimonial
arrangements. He had ruminated overnight the principle that Mrs.
Delarayne had laid down in regard to Leonetta,--"that she was much too
good for Denis Malster,"--and he was beginning to see that it was
entirely justified.

"It is a pity," he declared, addressing Miss Mallowcoid, "that it is
almost impossible in this country to arrange matches. I don't see why
you can't, but you can't."

Denis Malster, Guy, and the Tribes dropped their newspapers, and Sir
Joseph doing likewise, regarded the young nobleman with a perplexed
frown.

"Think of the terrible responsibility!" exclaimed Miss Mallowcoid.

"Yes, but that should not deter us,--surely!" Lord Henry rejoined.
"Everything relating to parenthood is responsibility, why shirk that
last duty of all?"

"But they wouldn't let us," Miss Mallowcoid objected.

"B