o knew all about
the great case said to a woman who had lunched with him.

"Looks more as if he were on his way to shoot," she laughed, as one does
laugh at other people's troubles, which are apt to be ridiculous. "He's
simply glaring."

"Poor beggar!" Her companion found pleasure in pitying Lord
Northmorland's brother, whom he had never succeeded in getting to know.
"Which is he, fool or hero?"

"Both. A fool to have proposed to the girl. A hero to stick to her, now
he has proposed. He must be awfully sick about the interview. I do think
it's excuse enough to throw her over."

"I don't know. It's the sort of business a man can't very well chuck,
once he's let himself in for it. Every one blames him now for having
anything to do with Miss Lorenzi. They'd blame him a lot more for
throwing her over."

"Women wouldn't."

"No. Because he happens to be young and good-looking. But all his
popularity won't make the women who like him receive his wife. She isn't
a woman's woman."

"I should think not, indeed! We're too clever to be taken in by that
sort, all eyes and melodrama. They say Lord Northmorland warned his
brother against her, and prophesied she'd get hold of him, if he didn't
let her alone. The Duchess of Amidon told Lady Peggy Lynch--whom I know
a little--that immediately after Lorenzi committed suicide, this Margot
girl wrote to Stephen Knight and implored him to help her. I can quite
believe she would. Fancy the daughter of the unsuccessful claimant to
his brother's title writing begging letters to a young man like Stephen
Knight! It appeals to one's sense of humour."

"What a pity Knight didn't see it in that light--what?"

"Yet he has a sense of humour, I believe. It's supposed to be one of his
charms. But the sense of humour often fails where one's own affairs are
concerned. You know he's celebrated for his quaint ideas about life.
They say he has socialistic views, or something rather like them. His
brother and he are as different from one another as light is from
darkness. Stephen gives away a lot of money, and Lady Peggy says that
nobody ever asks him for anything in vain. He can't stand seeing people
unhappy, if he can do anything to help. Probably, after he'd been kind
to the Lorenzi girl, against his brother's advice, and gone to see her a
few times, she grovelled at his feet and told him she was all alone in
the world, and would die if he didn't love her. He's just young enough
and romantic en