she cut that paragraph out of the _Morning
Star_. She must have had some other reason.

CHAPTER XVII

A LADY AND GENTLEMAN, WHO HUNG FIRE. NATURAL HISTORY, AND
ARTIFICIAL CHRONOLOGY. NEITHER WAS TWENTY YEARS YOUNGER.
CONFIDENCES ABOUT ANOTHER LADY AND GENTLEMAN, SOME YEARS SINCE. HOW
THE FIRST GENTLEMAN FINISHED HIS SECOND CIGAR. DR. LIVINGSTONE AND
SEKELETU. MR. NORBURY'S QUORUM. WHY ADRIAN TORRENS WOKE UP, AND
WHOSE VOICE PROMISED NOT TO MENTION HIS EYES. FEUDAL BEEF-TEA, AND
MRS. BAILEY. AN EARLY VISIT, FROM AN EARL. AN EXPERIMENT THAT
DISCLOSED A PAINFUL FACT

It is three weeks later at the Castle; three weeks later, that is, than
the story's last sight of it. It is the hottest night we have had this
year, says general opinion. Most of the many guests are scattered in the
gardens after dinner, enjoying the night-air and the golden moon, which
means to climb high in the cirrus-dappled blue in an hour or so. And
then it will be a fine moonlight night.

On such a night there is always music somewhere, and this evening
someone must be staying indoors to make it, as it comes from the windows
of the great drawing-room that opens on the garden. Someone is playing a
Beethoven sonata one knows well enough to pretend about with one's
fingers, theoretically. Only one can't think which it is. So says Miss
Smith-Dickenson, in the Shrubbery, to her companion, who is smoking a
Havana large enough to play a tune on if properly perforated. But she
wishes Miss Torrens would stop, and let Gwen and the Signore sing some
Don Juan. That is Miss Dickenson's way. She always takes exception to
this and to that, and wants t'other. It does not strike the Hon.
Percival Pellew, the smoker of the big cigar, as a defect in her
character, but rather as an indication of its illumination--a set-off to
her appearance, which is, of course, at its best in the half-dark of a
Shrubbery by moonlight, but is _passee_ for all that. Can't help that,
now, can we? But Mr. Pellew can make retrospective concession; she must
have told well enough, properly dressed, fifteen years ago. She don't
exactly bear the light now, and one can't expect it.

The Hon. Percival complimented himself internally on a greater
spirituality, which can overlook such points--mere clay?--and discern a
peculiar essence of soul in this lady which, had they met in her more
palatable days, might have been not uncongenial to his own. Rat