nd it has since occurred to
me that I should be a much wiser and happier woman if I always dressed
myself in the same colour as my drawing-room furniture. Then nobody
would be able to find me even in my own house. Don't you think it is
rather a neat idea?" And her ladyship looked round for the applause
which she had learned to expect as her right.

"You are a marvellous woman!" cried Lord Stonebridge, while the others
murmured their approval.

"I need never say 'Not at home'; callers would just come in and look
round the drawing-room and go out again, without ever seeing that I was
there at all. It really would be sweet!"

"It seems to me to be a theory which might be adapted with benefit to
all sorts and conditions of men," said Elisabeth; "I think I shall take
out a patent for designing invisible costumes for every possible
occasion. I feel I could do it, and do it well."

"It is adopted to a great extent even now," Sir Wilfred remarked; "I
believe that our generals wear scarlet so that they may not always be
distinguishable from the red-tape of the War Office."

"And one must not forget," added Lord Bobby thoughtfully, "that the
benches of the House of Commons are green."

"Now in church, of course, it would be just the other way," said Lady
Silverhampton; "I should line my pew with the same stuff as my Sunday
gown, so as to look as if I was there when I wasn't."

Lord Stonebridge began to argue. "But that wouldn't be the other way; it
would be the same thing."

"How stupid and accurate you are, Stonebridge! If our pew were lined
with gray chiffon like my Sunday frock, it couldn't be the same as if my
Sunday frock was made of crimson carpet like our pew. How can things
that are exactly opposite be the same? You can't prove that they are,
except by algebra; and as nobody here knows any algebra, you can't prove
it at all."

"Yes; I can. If I say you are like a person, it is the same thing as
saying that that person is like you."

"Not at all. If you said that I was like Connie Esdaile, I should
embrace you before the assembled company; and if you said she was like
me, she'd never forgive you as long as she lived. It is through
reasoning out things in this way that men make such idiotic mistakes."

"Isn't it funny," Elisabeth remarked, "that if you reason a thing out
you're always wrong, and if you never reason about it at all you're
always right?"

"Ah! but that is because you are a genius," murmured Cec