clock had just struck four, and he had begun to think of five. Lady
Enid's pleasant plumpness began rapidly to disappear.

"I can't say I do," she said sharply, feeling that most of the gilt was
being stripped off her sin.

She stopped in such obvious dissatisfaction that the Prophet, vaguely
aware that he had made some mistake, said,--

"Please go on. I am so interested. Why have you led a double life for
the last week and a half?"

"Year and a half, I said."

"I mean year and a half."

He forced his mobile features to assume a fixed expression of greedy,
though rather too constant, curiosity. Lady Enid brightened up.

"Mr. Vivian," she said, "many girls are born sensible-looking without
wishing it."

"Are they really? It never occurred to me."

"Such things very seldom do occur to men. Now that places these girls in
a very painful position. I was placed in this position as soon as I was
born, or at least as soon as I began to look like anything at all. For
babies really don't."

"That's very true," assented the Prophet, with more fervour.

"People continually said to me, 'What a nice sensible girl you are';
or--'One always feels your Common sense'; or--'There's nothing foolish
about you, Enid, thank Heaven!' The Chieftain relied upon me thoroughly.
So did the tenants. So did everybody. You can understand that it became
very trying?"

"Of course, of course."

"It's something to do with the shape of my eyebrows, the colour of my
hair, the way I smile and that sort of thing."

"No doubt it is."

"Mr. Vivian, I'll tell you now, that I've never felt sensible in all my
life."

"Really!" ejaculated the Prophet, still firmly holding all his features
together in an unyielding expression of fixed curiosity.

"Never once, however great the provocation. And in my family, with the
Chieftain, the provocation you can understand is exceptionally great."

The Marquis of Glome, who was the head of a clan called "The
MacArdells," was always named the Chieftain by his relations and
friends.

"I felt sure it must be," said the Prophet, decisively.

"Nevertheless it is so extremely difficult, if not impossible, not to
try to be what people take you for that I was in a perpetual condition
of acting sensibly, against my true nature."

"How very trying!" murmured the Prophet, mechanically.

"It was, Mr. Vivian. It often made me fell quite ill. Nobody but you
knows how I have suffered."

"And why do I know?" inqu