"You mean amongst men?" she said.

Howard smiled and eyed her questioningly.

"Well--I didn't," he replied, drily.

She laughed a little scornfully.

"Oh, I know the sort of man he is," she said. "I've read and heard
about them. The sort of man who falls in love with every woman he meet.
'A servant of dames'!"

Howard leant back and laughed with cynical enjoyment.

"You never were further out," he said. "He flirts--oh, my aunt, how he
flirts!--but as to falling in love--Did you ever see an iceberg, Miss
Falconer?"

She shook her head.

"Well, it's one of the biggest, the most beautiful frauds in the world.
When you meet one sailing along in the Atlantic, you think it one of
the nicest, sweetest things you ever saw: it's so dazzlingly bright,
with its thousand and one colours glittering in the sunlight. You quite
fall in love with it, and it looks so harmless, so enticing, that
you're tempted to get quite close to it; which no doubt is amusing to
the iceberg, but is slightly embarrassing for you; for the iceberg is
on you before you know it, and--and there isn't enough left of you for
a decent funeral. That's Stafford all the way. He's so pleasant, so
frank, so lovable, that you think him quite harmless; but while you're
admiring his confounded ingratiating ways, while you're growing
enthusiastic about his engaging tricks--he's the best rider, the best
dancer, the best shot--oh, but you must have heard of him!--he is
bearing down upon you; your heart goes under, and he--ah, well, he just
sails over you smiling, quite unconscious of having brought you to
everlasting smash."

"You are indeed a friend," she said with languid irony.

"Oh, you think I'm giving him away?" he said. "My dear Miss Falconer,
everybody knows him. Every ball-room every tennis-court, is strewed
with his wrecks. And all the time he doesn't know it; but goes his way
crowned with a modesty which is the marvel and the wonder of this most
marvellous of ages."

"It sounds like a hero out of one of 'Ouida's' novels," she remarked,
as listlessly as before.

But behind her lowered lids her eyes were shining with a singular
brightness.

Howard turned to her delightedly.

"My dear Miss Falconer, if you were a man I should ask to shake hands
with you. It so exactly describes him. That's just what he is. As
handsome as the dew--I beg your pardon!--as frank as a boy, as gentle
as a woman, as staunch, as a bull-dog, as brave--he would have sto