d
the lady, pouting and laughing.

"It is never too late for beauty to waken love," returned the baronet,
and they trifled a little. They were approaching Daphne's Bower, which
they entered, and sat there to taste the coolness of a descending
midsummer day.

The baronet seemed in a humour for dignified fooling; the lady for
serious converse.

"I shall believe again in Arthur's knights," she said. "When I was a
girl I dreamed of one."

"And he was in quest of the San Greal?"

"If you like."

"And showed his good taste by turning aside for the more tangible San
Blandish?"

"Of course you consider it would have been so," sighed the lady,
ruffling.

"I can only judge by our generation," said Sir Austin, with a bend of
homage.

The lady gathered her mouth. "Either we are very mighty or you are very
weak."

"Both, madam."

"But whatever we are, and if we are bad, bad! we love virtue, and truth,
and lofty souls, in men: and, when we meet those qualities in them, we
are constant, and would die for them--die for them. Ah! you know men but
not women."

"The knights possessing such distinctions must be young, I presume?"
said Sir Austin.

"Old, or young!"

"But if old, they are scarce capable of enterprise?"

"They are loved for themselves, not for their deeds."

"Ah!"

"Yes--ah!" said the lady. "Intellect may subdue women--make slaves of
them; and they worship beauty perhaps as much as you do. But they only
love for ever and are mated when they meet a noble nature."

Sir Austin looked at her wistfully.

"And did you encounter the knight of your dream?"

"Not then." She lowered her eyelids. It was prettily done.

"And how did you bear the disappointment?"

"My dream was in the nursery. The day my frock was lengthened to a gown
I stood at the altar. I am not the only girl that has been made a woman
in a day, and given to an ogre instead of a true knight."

"Good God!" exclaimed Sir Austin, "women have much to bear."

Here the couple changed characters. The lady became gay as the baronet
grew earnest.

"You know it is our lot," she said. "And we are allowed many amusements.
If we fulfil our duty in producing children, that, like our virtue, is
its own reward. Then, as a widow, I have wonderful privileges."

"To preserve which, you remain a widow?"

"Certainly," she responded. "I have no trouble now in patching and
piecing that rag the world calls--a character. I can sit at your feet
every day