ely she can't be soft on Gervase herself?" her husband reflects,
with a sensation of amusement; "it would be too funny, after running so
straight all these years, and just as her daughters are growing up; but
they often are like that."

He is not sure whether the idea diverts or irritates him, but he knows
that he has always detested Gervase, such a coxcomb and such a humbug as
the fellow is!

"Respect women, good Lord!" ejaculates Usk in his solitude.

"To be sure," adds that honest gentleman in his own mind, "there are
very few of 'em who would thank you to respect 'em nowadays."

"Gervase will be here by dinner," he says in the course of the day to
Princess Sabaroff.

"Indeed," she replies, with indifference. "Who is he?"

"A friend of my wife's; at least, a cousin. I thought you might know
him; he was some time in Russia."

"No,"--and there is a coldness in the negative disproportioned to so
simple a denial,--"I do not think so. I do not remember such a name. Who
is he?"

"A person who is expected to be great in foreign affairs some day or
other," says Brandolin. "He will have one qualification rare in an
English foreign minister,--daily growing rarer, thanks to the
imbecilities of examinations: he knows how to bow and he knows what to
say."

"A friend of yours?"

"Oh, no; an acquaintance. He thinks very ill of me."

"Why?"

"Because I do nothing for my country. He thinks he does a great deal
when he has fomented a quarrel or received a decoration."

"That is not generous. The world owes much to diplomatists: it will know
how much in a few years, when it will be governed by clerks controlled
by telephones."

"That is true: I stand corrected. But Gervase and I have few sympathies:
none, indeed, except politically, and even there we differ,--his is the
Toryism of Peel, mine is the Toryism of the late Lord Derby: there are
leagues between the two."

"I know: the one is opportunism; the other is optimate-ism."

"Perhaps," says Brandolin, with a smile, and thinks, meantime, "She
knows something about him. What is it?"

"Does she know Gervase, despite her denial?" he wonders. He has an
impression that she does. There was a look of recognition in her eyes
when she gave that vague bland gesture in answer to her host. All
trifles in her interest him, as they always do interest a man in a woman
whom he admires and is not sure that he understands; and Gervase he is
aware has been a good deal in Russia.