arbre et l'ecorce ne mettez pas le
doigt._ That is sound advice which I have heard given at the Francais."

"That is said of not interfering between married people."

"It is generally true of people who wish, or may not wish, to marry. And
I suppose, Alan, that when you speak in my house of renewing
your--your--relations with the Princess Sabaroff, you do not mean that
you have any object less serious than _le bon motif_?"

Gervase is amused, although he is disconcerted and irritated.

"Come, Dorothy, your guests are not always so very serious, are they? I
never knew you so prim before."

Then she in turn feels angry. She always steadily adheres to the
convenient fiction that she knows nothing whatever of the amorous
filaments which bind her guests together in pairs, as turtle-doves might
be tied together by blue ribbons.

"If you only desire to reawake the sentiments of Madame Sabaroff in your
favor that you may again make sport of them, you must excuse me if I say
that I cannot assist your efforts, and that I sincerely hope they will
not be successful," she says, with dignity and distance.

"Do you suppose his are any better than mine?" asks Gervase, irritably,
as he waves his hand towards the window which looks on the west gardens.
Between the yew- and cedar-trees, at some distance from the house,
Brandolin is walking beside Xenia Sabaroff: his manner is interested and
deferential; she moves with slow and graceful steps down the grassy
paths, listening with apparent willingness, her head is uncovered, she
carries a large sunshade opened over it made of white lace and pale-rose
silk, she has a cluster of Duchess of Sutherland roses in her hand. They
are really only speaking of recent French poets, but those who look at
them cannot divine that.

"He is not my cousin, and he does not solicit my assistance," says
Dorothy Usk, seeing the figures in her garden with some displeasure.
"_Je ne fais pas la police pour les autres_; but if he asked me what you
asked me, I should give him the same answer that I give to you."

"He is probably independent of any assistance," says Gervase, with
irritable irony.

"Probably," says his hostess, who is very skilful at fanning faint
flame. "He is not a man whom I like myself, but many women--most women,
I believe--think him irresistible."

Thereon she leaves him, without any more sympathy or solace, to go and
receive some county people who have come to call, and who converse