play. When Dale clamoured for
a rocking-horse, she found that the articles of association did not
provide for imaginative equitation. As the children grew up, the
committee had from time to time to revise the articles and submit them
to the general body for approval. There were many meetings before the
new sections relating to a University career for the boy and the coming
out for the girls were satisfactorily drafted. Once given the effect
of law, however, there was no appeal against these provisions. Both
committee and general body were powerless. Dale certainly owed his
methodical habits to his mechanical training, but whence he derived and
how he maintained his exuberance and spontaneity has often puzzled
me. He himself accounts for it on the score of heredity, in that an
ancestress of his married a highwayman who was hanged at Tyburn under
William and Mary.

In person Lady Kynnersley is lean and blanched and grey-haired. She
wears gold spectacles, which stand out oddly against the thin whiteness
of her face; she is still a handsome, distinguished woman, who can have,
when she chooses, a most gracious manner. As I, worldling and jester
though I am, for some mysterious reason have found favour in the lady's
eyes, she manifests this graciousness whenever we foregather. Ergo,
I like Lady Kynnersley, and would put myself to much inconvenience in
order to do her a service.

She kept me waiting in the drawing-room but a minute before she made
her appearance, grasped my hand, proclaimed my goodness in responding
so soon to her call, bade me sit down on the sofa by her side, inquired
after my health, and, the gods of politeness being propitiated, plunged
at once into the midst of matters.

Dale was going downhill headlong to Gadarene catastrophe. He had no
eyes or ears or thoughts for any one in the world but for a certain Lola
Brandt, a brazen creature from a circus, the shape of whose limbs was
the common knowledge of mankind from Dublin to Yokohama, and whose path
by sea and land, from Yokohama to Dublin, was strewn with the bodies of
her victims. With this man-eating tigress, declared Lady Kynnersley,
was Dale infatuated. He scorched himself morning, noon, and night in her
devastating presence. Had cut himself adrift from home, from society.
Had left trailing about on his study table a jeweller's bill for a
diamond bracelet. Was committing follies that made my brain reel to
hear. Had threatened, if worried much long