t," said Mr
Palliser.

"Then I wish it was a thousand and twelve," said Lady de Courcy.

"In that case I should not have come at all," said Mr Palliser. He
did not mean to be uncivil, and had only stated a fact.

"The young men are becoming absolute bears," said the countess to her
daughter Margaretta.

He had been in the room nearly an hour when he did at last find
himself standing close to Lady Dumbello: close to her, and without
any other very near neighbour.

"I should hardly have expected to find you here," he said.

"Nor I you," she answered.

"Though, for the matter of that, we are both near our own homes."

"I am not near mine."

"I meant Plumstead; your father's place."

"Yes; that was my home once."

"I wish I could show you my uncle's place. The castle is very fine,
and he has some good pictures."

"So I have heard."

"Do you stay here long?"

"Oh, no. I go to Cheshire the day after to-morrow. Lord Dumbello is
always there when the hunting begins."

"Ah, yes; of course. What a happy fellow he is; never any work to do!
His constituents never trouble him, I suppose?"

"I don't think they ever do, much."

After that Mr Palliser sauntered away again, and Lady Dumbello passed
the rest of the evening in silence. It is to be hoped that they both
were rewarded by that ten minutes of sympathetic intercourse for the
inconvenience which they had suffered in coming to Courcy Castle.

But that which seems so innocent to us had been looked on in a
different light by the stern moralists of that house.

"By Jove!" said the Honourable George to his cousin, Mr Gresham, "I
wonder how Dumbello likes it."

"It seems to me that Dumbello takes it very easily."

"There are some men who will take anything easily," said George, who,
since his own marriage, had learned to have a holy horror of such
wicked things.

"She's beginning to come out a little," said Lady Clandidlem to Lady
de Courcy, when the two old women found themselves together over a
fire in some back sitting-room. "Still waters always run deep, you
know."

"I shouldn't at all wonder if she were to go off with him," said Lady
de Courcy.

"He'll never be such a fool as that," said Lady Clandidlem.

"I believe men will be fools enough for anything," said Lady de
Courcy. "But, of course, if he did, it would come to nothing
afterwards. I know one who would not be sorry. If ever a man was
tired of a woman, Lord Dumbello is tired of her."

B