, aghast, he
dropped his rod until its flexible tip lay on the darkening water, and
stared off toward the house.

She had said it, and its effect on him was much what she had expected
it to be.

He was so young that his strength, she knew, was largely potential;
only she, as far as she knew, had ever observed its potentiality; to
others he was a handsome, merry, young animal, "keen on girls," as he
himself called it, and as innocent of any comprehension of the deeper
meanings of life as a pleasant poodle pup.

She, being of those who have eyes to see, had, during the three days
she had known him, watched him closely, with the result that he
interested her.

And now she had said to him this thing that so utterly disconcerted
him.

Partly out of kindness she had said it, and partly because it was the
quickest way to fix his genial but roving attention where she wished
it to be--on herself.

He was so young that her five years of seniority, and the existence of
her eleven-year-old son, had, to his mind, separated her from him by
something like a generation. He had found her a ripper as to looks,
awfully jolly to talk to and no end of a musician.

But he had never thought of her as belonging to his own class in
years, and she knew this.

And as she watched him first shrink and then straighten himself under
the blow she had given him, she knew that her first move was a
success.

For over a minute he did not speak. Then he looked up.

"How in the devil did you find that out?" he asked, abruptly.

"I saw it. Do you mind my warning you?"

"Good gracious, no. It's--most awfully kind of you. I--I really never
thought of such a thing. You see, she was always a great pal of
Dudley's--my eldest brother's."

Lady Harden laughed.

"So she seemed too old for--that sort of thing? I see. In fact, I
_saw_ from the first, and that is why I ventured---- We have drifted
nearly to the willows, by the way."

He laid his neglected rod in the bottom of the boat, and rowed in
silence until his companion resumed, lighting a cigarette, and
speaking with easy deliberation between puffs: "She is thirty-four,
and--that is not old, nowadays. The Duke of Cornwall is crazy to marry
her, by the way."

"Cornwall!"

"Cornwall. And--there are others. My dear Teddy--may I, a contemporary
of Miss--Methuselah--call you Teddy? Are you really so _naif_ as not
to have known?"

It was almost dark, but she could still see the flush that bu