il Farquhar.

Lady Silverhampton contradicted him. "Not at all; it's because she is a
woman."

"Well, I'd rather be a woman than a genius any day," said Elisabeth; "it
takes less keeping up."

"You are both," said Cecil.

"And I'm neither," added Lord Bobby; "so what's the state of the odds?"

"Let's invent more invisible costumes," cried Lady Silverhampton; "they
interest me. Suggest another one, Elisabeth."

"I should design a special one for lovers in the country. Don't you know
how you are always coming upon lovers in country lanes, and how hard
they try to look as if they weren't there, and how badly they succeed? I
should dress them entirely in green, faintly relieved by brown; and then
they'd look as if they were only part of the hedges and stiles."

"How the lovers of the future will bless you!" exclaimed Lord Bobby. "I
only regret that my love-making days are over before your patent
costumes come out. I remember Sir Richard Esdaile once coming upon
Violet and me when we were spooning in the shrubbery at Esdaile Court,
and we tried in vain to efface ourselves and become as part of the
scenery. You see, it is so difficult to look exactly like two laurel
bushes, when one of you is dressed in pink muslin and the other in white
flannel."

Lady Robert blushed becomingly. "Oh, Bobby, it wasn't pink muslin that
day; it was blue cambric."

"That doesn't matter. There are as many laurel bushes made out of pink
muslin as out of blue cambric, when you come to that. The difficulty of
identifying one's self with one's environment (that's the correct
expression, my dear) would be the same in either costume; but Miss
Farringdon is now going, once for all, to remove that difficulty."

"I came upon two young people in a lane not long ago," said Elisabeth,
"and the minute they saw me they began to walk in the ditches, one on
one side of the road and one on the other. Now if only they had worn my
costumes, such a damp and uncomfortable mode of going about the country
would have been unnecessary; besides, it was absurd in any case. If you
were walking with your mother-in-law you wouldn't walk as far apart as
that; you wouldn't be able to hear a word she said."

"Ah! my dear young friend, that wouldn't matter," Lord Bobby interposed,
"nor in any way interfere with the pleasure of the walk. Really nice men
never make a fuss about little things like that. If only their
mothers-in-law are kind enough to go out walking with