ou are so good as greatly to exaggerate them. Would you
have married me if you had known that I was destined to success?'

'I did know it.'

'Well, I didn't'

'You were too modest.'

'You didn't think so when I proposed to you.'

'Well, if I had married you I couldn't have married _him_--and he's so
nice,' Mrs. Capadose said. Lyon knew she thought it--he had learned that
at dinner--but it vexed him a little to hear her say it. The gentleman
designated by the pronoun came up, amid the prolonged handshaking for
good-night, and Mrs. Capadose remarked to her husband as she turned
away, 'He wants to paint Amy.'

'Ah, she's a charming child, a most interesting little creature,' the
Colonel said to Lyon. 'She does the most remarkable things.'

Mrs. Capadose stopped, in the rustling procession that followed the
hostess out of the room. 'Don't tell him, please don't,' she said.

'Don't tell him what?'

'Why, what she does. Let him find out for himself.' And she passed on.

'She thinks I swagger about the child--that I bore people,' said the
Colonel. 'I hope you smoke.' He appeared ten minutes later in the
smoking-room, in a brilliant equipment, a suit of crimson foulard
covered with little white spots. He gratified Lyon's eye, made him feel
that the modern age has its splendour too and its opportunities for
costume. If his wife was an antique he was a fine specimen of the period
of colour: he might have passed for a Venetian of the sixteenth century.
They were a remarkable couple, Lyon thought, and as he looked at the
Colonel standing in bright erectness before the chimney-piece while he
emitted great smoke-puffs he did not wonder that Everina could not
regret she had not married _him_. All the gentlemen collected at Stayes
were not smokers and some of them had gone to bed. Colonel Capadose
remarked that there probably would be a smallish muster, they had had
such a hard day's work. That was the worst of a hunting-house--the men
were so sleepy after dinner; it was devilish stupid for the ladies,
even for those who hunted themselves--for women were so extraordinary,
they never showed it. But most fellows revived under the stimulating
influences of the smoking-room, and some of them, in this confidence,
would turn up yet. Some of the grounds of their confidence--not all of
them--might have been seen in a cluster of glasses and bottles on a
table near the fire, which made the great salver and its contents
twinkle sociab