st will reassure you," Arranmore remarked, drily.

Lady Caroom sighed.

"I wonder how it is," she murmured, "that one's conscience and one's
digestion both grow weaker as one grows old. You and I, Arranmore, are
content to accept the good things of the earth as they come to us."

"With me," he answered, "it is the philosophy of approaching old age,
but you have no such excuse. With you it must be sheer callousness.
You are in an evil way, Lady Caroom. Do have another of these quails."

"You are very rude," she answered, "and extremely unsympathetic. But I
will have another quail."

"I do not Want to destroy your appetite, Mr. Brooks," Lady Sybil said,
"but this is--if not a farewell feast, something like it."

He looked at her with sudden interest.

"You are going away?" he exclaimed.

"Very soon," she assented. "We were so comfortable at Enton, and the
hunting has been so good, that we cut out one of our visits. Mamma
developed a convenient attack of influenza. But the next one is very
near now, and our host is almost tired of us."

Lord Arranmore was for a moment silent.

"You have made Enton," he said, "intolerable for a solitary man. When
you go I go."

"I wish you could say whither instead of when," Lady Caroom answered.
"How bored you would be at Redcliffe. It is really the most outlandish
place we go to."

"Why ever do we accept, mamma?" Sybil asked. "Last year I nearly cried
my eyes out, I was so dull. Not a man fit to talk to, or a horse fit to
ride. The girls bicycle, and Lord Redcliffe breeds cattle and talks
turnips."

"And they all drink port after dinner," Lady Caroom moaned; "but we have
to go, dear. We must live rent free somewhere during these months to
get through the season."

Sybil looked at Brooks with laughter in her eyes.

"Aren't we terrible people?" she whispered. "You are by way of being
literary, aren't you? You should write an article on the shifts of the
aristocracy. Mamma and I could supply you with all the material. The
real trouble, of course, is that I don't marry."

"Fancy glorying in your failure," Lady Caroom said, complacently.
"Three seasons, Arranmore, have I had to drag that girl round. I've
washed my hands of her now. She must look after herself. A girl who
refuses one of the richest young men in England because she didn't like
his collars is incorrigible."

"It was not his collars, mother," Sybil objected. "It was his neck. He
was always called 'the Giraffe