famous gem too suddenly disclosed,
and therefore oddly disparate in all these qualities, that his decorous
pleasant voice might quite permissibly have shaken a trifle (as indeed
it did), when Mr. Wycherley implored Lady Drogheda to walk with him to
Teviot Bay, on the off-chance of recovering his sleeve-links.

And there they did find one of the trinkets, but the tide had swept
away the other, or else the sand had buried it. So they rested there
upon the rocks, after an unavailing search, and talked of many trifles,
amid surroundings oddly incongruous.

For this Teviot Bay is a primeval place, a deep-cut, narrow notch in
the tip of Carnrick, and is walled by cliffs so high and so precipitous
that they exclude a view of anything except the ocean. The bay opens
due west; and its white barriers were now developing a violet tinge,
for this was on a sullen afternoon, and the sea was ruffled by spiteful
gusts. Wycherley could find no color anywhere save in this glowing,
tiny and exquisite woman; and everywhere was a gigantic peace, vexed
only when high overhead a sea-fowl jeered at these modish persons, as
he flapped toward an impregnable nest.

"And by this hour to-morrow," thought Mr. Wycherley, "I shall be
chained to that good, strapping, wholesome Juno of a girl!"

So he fell presently into a silence, staring at the vacant west, which
was like a huge and sickly pearl, not thinking of anything at all, but
longing poignantly for something which was very beautiful and strange
and quite unattainable, with precisely that anguish he had sometimes
known in awaking from a dream of which he could remember nothing save
its piercing loveliness.

"And thus ends the last day of our bachelorhood!" said Lady Drogheda,
upon a sudden. "You have played long enough--La, William, you have led
the fashion for ten years, you have written four merry comedies, and
you have laughed as much as any man alive, but you have pulled down all
that nature raised in you, I think. Was it worth while?"

"Faith, but nature's monuments are no longer the last cry in
architecture," he replied; "and I believe that _The Plain Dealer_ and
_The Country Wife_ will hold their own."

"And you wrote them when you were just a boy! Ah, yes, you might have
been our English Moliere, my dear. And, instead, you have elected to
become an authority upon cravats and waistcoats."

"Eh, madam"--he smiled--"there was a time when I too was foolishly
intent to divert