g heavens not having yet showered her
like very plentifully upon us. Then it was first heard that Percy Dacier
had been travelling with her. Miss Asper heard of it. Her uncle, Mr.
Quintin Manx, the millionnaire, was an acquaintance of the new Judge and
titled dignitary, Sir Cramborne Wathin, and she visited Lady Wathin,
at whose table the report in the journals of the Nile-boat party was
mentioned. Lady Wathin's table could dispense with witty women, and,
for that matter, witty men. The intrusion of the spontaneous on the
stereotyped would have clashed. She preferred, as hostess, the old legal
anecdotes sure of their laugh, and the citations from the manufactories
of fun in the Press, which were current and instantly intelligible to
all her guests. She smiled suavely on an impromptu pun, because her
experience of the humorous appreciation of it by her guests bade her
welcome the upstart. Nothing else impromptu was acceptable. Mrs. Warwick
therefore was not missed by Lady Wathin. 'I have met her,' she said. 'I
confess I am not one of the fanatics about Mrs. Warwick. She has a sort
of skill in getting men to clamour. If you stoop to tickle them, they
will applaud. It is a way of winning a reputation.' When the ladies were
separated from the gentlemen by the stream of Claret, Miss Asper
heard Lady Wathin speak of Mrs. Warwick again. An allusion to Lord
Dannisburgh's fit of illness in the House of Lords led to her saying
that there was no doubt he had been fascinated, and that, in her
opinion, Mrs. Warwick was a dangerous woman. Sir Cramborne knew
something of Mr. Warwick; 'Poor man!' she added. A lady present put a
question concerning Mrs. Warwick's beauty. 'Yes,' Lady Wathin said, 'she
has good looks to aid her. Judging from what I hear and have seen, her
thirst is for notoriety. Sooner or later we shall have her making a
noise, you may be certain. Yes, she has the secret of dressing well--in
the French style.'

A simple newspaper report of the expedition of a Nileboat party could
stir the Powers to take her up and turn her on their wheel in this
manner.

But others of the sons and daughters of London were regretting her
prolonged absence. The great and exclusive Whitmonby, who had dined once
at Lady Wathin's table, and vowed never more to repeat that offence to
his patience, lamented bitterly to Henry Wilmers that the sole woman
worthy of sitting at a little Sunday evening dinner with the cream of
the choicest men of t