, and humiliates him. But
the admiration of so lovely a woman as Xenia Sabaroff would lay a
flattering unction to the soul of any man, even if she were absolutely
mindless; and she gives him the impression that she has a good deal of
mind, and one out of the common order.

"My writings have no other merit," he says, after the expression of his
sense of the honor she does him, "than being absolutely the chronicle of
what I have seen and what I have thought; and I think they are expressed
in tolerably pure English, though that is claiming a great deal in these
times; for since John Newman laid down the pen there is scarcely a
living Briton who can write his own tongue with eloquence and purity."

"I think it must be very nice to leave off wandering if one has a home,"
replies Madame Sabaroff, with a slight sigh, which gave him the
impression that, though no doubt she had many houses, she had no home.
"Where is your place that you spoke of just now?--the place where you
learned to love Horace?"

Brandolin is always pleased to speak of St. Hubert's Lea. He has a great
love for it and for the traditions of his race, which makes many people
accuse him of great family pride, though, as has been well said _a
propos_ of a greater man than Brandolin, it is rather that sentiment
which the Romans defined as piety. When he talks of his old home he
grows eloquent, unreserved, cordial; and he describes with an artist's
touch its antiquities, its landscapes, and its old-world and sylvan
charms.

"It must be charming to care for any place so much as that," says his
companion, after hearing him with interest.

"I think one cares more for places than for people," he replies.

"Sometimes one cares for neither," says Xenia Sabaroff, with a tone
which in a less lovely woman would have been morose.

"One must suffice very thoroughly to one's self in such a case?"

"Oh, not necessarily."

At that moment there is a little bustle under a very big cedar near at
hand; servants are bringing out folding tables, folding chairs, a silver
camp-kettle, cakes, fruit, cream, liqueurs, sandwiches, wines, all those
items of an afternoon tea on which Brandolin has animadverted with so
much disgust in the library an hour before. Lady Usk has chosen to take
these murderous compounds out of doors in the west garden. She herself
comes out of the house with a train of her guests around her.

"Adieu to rational conversation," says Brandolin, as he rises