e a perfectly unattractive, stupid woman snapped up at last, when I
have given up hopes of settling her in life. Sometimes there are men
so uninspiring that I cannot converse with them a single moment without
yawning; but though failures in all other relations, one can conceive
of their being tolerably useful as husbands and fathers; not for one's
self, you understand, but for one's neighbours.

Dr. La Touche's life now, to any understanding eye, is as incomplete
as the unfinished window in Aladdin's tower. He is too wrinkled, too
studious, too quiet, too patient for his years. His children need a
mother, his old family servants need discipline, his baronial halls need
sweeping and cleaning (I haven't seen them, but I know they do!), and
his aged aunt needs advice and guidance. On the other hand, there are
those (I speak guardedly) who have walked in shady, sequestered paths
all their lives, looking at hundreds of happy lovers on the sunny
highroad, but never joining them; those who adore erudition, who love
children, who have a genius for unselfish devotion, who are sweet and
refined and clever, and who look perfectly lovely when they put on
grey satin and leave off eyeglasses. They say they are over forty, and
although this probably is exaggeration, they may be thirty-nine and
three-quarters; and if so, the time is limited in which to find for them
a worthy mate, since half of the masculine population is looking for
itself, and always in the wrong quarter, needing no assistance to
discover rose-cheeked idiots of nineteen, whose obvious charms draw
thousands to a dull and uneventful fate.

These thoughts were running idly through my mind while the Honourable
Michael McGillicuddy was discoursing to me of Mr. Gladstone's
misunderstanding of Irish questions,--a misunderstanding, he said, so
colossal, so temperamental, and so all-embracing, that it amounted
to genius. I was so anxious to return to Salemina that I wished I had
ordered the car at ten thirty instead of eleven; but I made up my mind,
as we ladies went to the drawing-room for coffee, that I would seize the
first favourable opportunity to explore the secret chambers of Dr. La
Touche's being. I love to rummage in out-of-the-way corners of people's
brains and hearts if they will let me. I like to follow a courteous host
through the public corridors of his house and come upon a little chamber
closed to the casual visitor. If I have known him long enough I put
my h