reaches on the lawn--the group that contains, amongst others, her
husband, and----her friend. She would not willingly have stayed where
they were, but she is too proud to pass them by without a word. "Who
will come with me? Oh! _no_," as several rise to join her, laughing,
though rather faintly. "It is not compulsory--even though I go alone, I
shall feel that I am equal to McIntyre."

Lord Baltimore had started as her first words fell upon his ears. He had
been so preoccupied that her light footfalls coming over the grass had
not reached him, and her voice, when it fell upon the air, gave him a
shock. He half rises from his seat:

"Shall I?" he is beginning, and then stops short, something in her face
checking him.

"_You!_" she conquers herself a second later; all the scorn and contempt
is crushed, by sheer force of will, out of look and tone, and she goes
on as clearly, and as entirely without emotion, as though she were a
mere machine--a thing she has taught herself to be. "Not you," she says
gaily, waving him lightly from her. "You are too useful here"--as she
says this she gives him the softest if fleetest smile. It is a
masterpiece. "You can amuse one here and there, whilst I--I--I want a
girl, I think," looking round. "Bertie,"--with a fond, an almost
passionate glance at her little son--"always likes one of his
sweethearts (and they are many) to accompany him when he takes his walks
abroad."

"Like father, like son, I daresay. Ha, ha!" laughs a fatuous youth--a
Mr. Courtenay--who lives about five miles from the Court, and has
dropped in this afternoon, very unfortunately, it must be confessed, to
pay his respects to Lady Baltimore. Fools always hit on the truth!
_Why_, nobody knows, except the heavens above us--but so it is. Young
Courtenay, who has heard nothing of the unpleasant relations existing
between his host and hostess, and who would be quite incapable of
understanding them if he _had_ heard, now springs a remark upon the
assembled five or six people present that almost reduces them to powder.

Dysart casts a murderous glance at him.

"A clever old proverb," says Lady Baltimore lightly. She is apparently
the one unconcerned person amongst them. "I always like those old
sayings. There is so much truth in them."

She has forced herself to say this; but as the words pass her lips she
blanches perceptibly. As if unable to control herself she draws her
little son towards her; her arms tighten round h