e old cedar at the bottom of the lawn, and began to
read, and soon she began to dream. The news in the papers, even the most
responsible of them, had been very serious. The shadow of war was once
more rising in the East--war which, if it came, England could scarcely
escape, and if it did Someone would have to go and fight in that most
perilous of all forms of battle, torpedo attack.

The book she had taken with her was one of exceedingly clever verse
written years before by just such another as herself; a girl, beautiful,
learned, and yet absolutely womanly, and endowed, moreover, with that
gift so rare among learned women, the gift of humour. Long ago, this
girl had taken the fever in Egypt, and died of it; but before she died
she wrote a book of poems and verses, which, though long forgotten--if
ever known--by the multitude, is still treasured and re-read by some,
and of these Miss Nitocris was one. Just now the book was open at the
hundred and forty-third page, on which there is a portion of a poem
entitled _Natural Selection_.

Miss Nitocris' eyes alternately rested on the page for a few moments and
then lifted and looked over the lawn towards the open French windows.
The verses ran thus:

_"But there comes an idealless lad,
With a strut, and a stare, and a smirk;
And I watch, scientific though sad,
The Law of Selection at work._

_"Of Science he hasn't a trace,
He seeks not the How and the Why,
But he sings with an amateur's grace
And he dances much better than I._

_"And we know the more dandified males
By dance and by song win their wives--
'Tis a law that with_ Aves _prevails,
And even in_ Homo _survives."_

"Just my precious papa's ideas!" she murmured, with a toss of her head,
and something like a little sniff. "What a nuisance it all is!
Aristocracy of intellect, indeed! Just as if any of us, even my dear
Dad, if he _is_ considered one of the cleverest and most learned men in
Europe, were anything more than what Newton called himself--a little
child picking up pebbles and grains of sand on the shore of a boundless
and fathomless ocean, and calling them knowledge. I'm not quite sure
that that's correct, but it's something like it. Still, that's not the
question. How on earth am I to tell poor Mark? Oh dear! he'll have to be
'Mr Merrill' now, I suppose. What a shame! I've half a mind to rebel,
and vindicate the Law of Selection at any price. Ah, there he is. Well,
I suppose I'