the
histories of all these--which gin had broken a man's leg, which gun had
killed a man. That one, I remember his saying, had been set by a
game-keeper in the track of a notorious poacher; but the keeper,
forgetting what he had done, went that way himself, received the charge
in the lower part of his body, and died of the wound. I don't like
them here, but I've never yet given directions for them to be taken
away." She added, playfully, "Man-traps are of rather ominous
significance where a person of our sex lives, are they not?"

Grace was bound to smile; but that side of womanliness was one which
her inexperience had no great zest in contemplating.

"They are interesting, no doubt, as relics of a barbarous time happily
past," she said, looking thoughtfully at the varied designs of these
instruments of torture--some with semi-circular jaws, some with
rectangular; most of them with long, sharp teeth, but a few with none,
so that their jaws looked like the blank gums of old age.

"Well, we must not take them too seriously," said Mrs. Charmond, with
an indolent turn of her head, and they moved on inward. When she had
shown her visitor different articles in cabinets that she deemed likely
to interest her, some tapestries, wood-carvings, ivories, miniatures,
and so on--always with a mien of listlessness which might either have
been constitutional, or partly owing to the situation of the
place--they sat down to an early cup of tea.

"Will you pour it out, please? Do," she said, leaning back in her
chair, and placing her hand above her forehead, while her almond
eyes--those long eyes so common to the angelic legions of early Italian
art--became longer, and her voice more languishing. She showed that
oblique-mannered softness which is perhaps most frequent in women of
darker complexion and more lymphatic temperament than Mrs. Charmond's
was; who lingeringly smile their meanings to men rather than speak
them, who inveigle rather than prompt, and take advantage of currents
rather than steer.

"I am the most inactive woman when I am here," she said. "I think
sometimes I was born to live and do nothing, nothing, nothing but float
about, as we fancy we do sometimes in dreams. But that cannot be
really my destiny, and I must struggle against such fancies."

"I am so sorry you do not enjoy exertion--it is quite sad! I wish I
could tend you and make you very happy."

There was something so sympathetic, so appreciative,