ese; he has lived with Arabs, Bohemians, and wild men of the woods,
and believes that he has not such a thing as prejudice about him; yet at
the bottom of his soul there is this absurd feeling born of sheer
conventionality,--he cannot thoroughly like a light-minded woman.
Absurd, indeed, in the times in which his lot is cast! He is quite
ashamed of it.

Dorothy Usk does not favor the modern mode of having relays of guests
for two or three days; she thinks it makes a country house too like an
hotel. She wishes her people to be perfectly well assorted, and then to
stay with her at least a week, even two weeks or three weeks. People do
not often object: Orme, Denton, and Surrenden are all popular places,
and Surrenden is perhaps most popular of all.

"An ideal house," says Brandolin, who would not stay a day where he was
not as free as air.

"It's too much like an hotel," grumbles the master of it, "and an hotel
where the _table-d'hote_ bell rings to deaf ears. Lord! I remember in my
poor mother's days everybody had to be down to breakfast at nine o'clock
every morning as regularly as if they were charity children, and the
whole lot of 'em were marched off to church on Sunday whether they liked
it or not. The villagers used to line the path across the fields to see
the great folks pass. Now it's as much as ever Dolly can do to get a
woman or two up in time to go with her. How things are changed, by Jove!
And it isn't so very long ago, either."

"The march of intellect, my dear George," says Brandolin; "neither _le
bon Dieu_ nor we are great folks any longer."

"Well, I think it's a pity," sighs Usk. "Everybody was happier then, and
jollier too, though we do tear about so to try and get amused."

"There is still nothing to prevent you going to sleep in the big pew if
it pleases you," replies Brandolin; "and Lawrence Hamilton always goes
that he may look at Mrs. Curzon's profile as she sings: she is really
saintly then. I think Sunday service is to Englishwomen what confession
is to Catholic ladies: it sweeps all the blots off the week's tablets.
It is convenient, if illogical."

"You are very irreligious," says his host, who is invariably orthodox
when orthodoxy doesn't interfere with anything.

"Not more so than most people," says Brandolin. "I have even felt
religious when I have been alone in the savannas or in the jungle. I
don't feel so in a wooden box covered with red velvet, with a curate
bawling in my ears