eprivation after dinner!"

"My lady's very ruffled to-day," says Usk to Mr. Wootton. "I don't know
which of her doves has turned out a fighting-cock."

"That reminds me," observes Mr. Wootton. "I wanted to ask you, did you
know that Gervase, when he was Lord Baird, was very much _au mieux_ with
Madame Sabaroff? I remember hearing long ago from Russians----"

Lady Usk interrupts the great man angrily: "Very much _au mieux_! What
barbarous polygot language for a great critic like you! Must you have
the assistance of bad grammar in two tongues to take away my friend's
reputation?"

Lord Usk chuckles. "Reputations aren't taken away so easily; they're
very hardy plants nowadays, and will stand a good deal of bad weather."

Mr. Wootton is shocked. "Oh, Lady Usk! Reputation! You couldn't think I
meant to imply of any guest of yours--only, you know, he was secretary
in Petersburg when he was Lord Baird, and so----"

"Well, it doesn't follow that he is the lover of every woman in
Petersburg!"

Mr. Wootton is infinitely distressed. "Oh, indeed I didn't mean anything
of that sort."

"You did mean everything of that sort," murmurs his hostess.

"But, you see, he admired her very much, was constantly with her, and
yesterday I saw they didn't speak to each other, so I was curious to
know what could be the reason."

"I believe she didn't recognize him."

Mr. Wootton smiles. "Oh, ladies have such prodigious powers of
oblivion--and remembrance!"

"Yes," observes Usk, with complacency: "the storms of memory sometimes
sink into them as if they were sponges, and sometimes glide off them as
if they were ducks. It is just as they find it convenient. But Madame
Sabaroff can't have been more than a child when Gervase was in Russia."

Mr. Wootton smiles again significantly. "She was married."

"To a brute!" cries Dorothy Usk.

"All husbands," says Lord Usk, with a chuckle, "are brutes, and all
wives are angels. _C'est imprime!_"

"I hope no one will ever call me an angel! I should know at once that I
was a bore!"

"No danger, my lady: you've no wings on your shoulders, and you've salt
on your tongue."

"I'm sure you mean to be odiously rude, but to my taste it's a great
compliment."

"My dear Alan," says Dorothy Usk, having got him at a disadvantage in
her boudoir one-quarter of an hour after luncheon, "what has there been
between you and the Princess Sabaroff? Everybody feels there is
something. It is in the air. Indee