"How nice! But I mean the _Queen_ newspaper. I am dying to know if it really _is_ coming in. Now it has been seen in Paris, I'm afraid it's inevitable."

"May I ask what _it_ is?"

"Perhaps I oughtn't to mention it--crinoline. There is a talk about something called a crinolette."

"And Crinolette, I suppose, is own sister to Crinoline?"

"I'm afraid so--don't you hate them? I do; I love the early Italian style--clinging cashmeres, soft flowing draperies."

"And accentuated angles--well, yes. If one has to ride in a hansom or a single brougham with a woman the hoop and powder style is rather a burthen. But women are such lovely beings--they are adorable in any costume. Madame Tallien with bare feet, and no petticoats to speak of--Pompadour in patches and wide-spreading brocade--Margaret of Orleans in a peaked head dress and puffed sleeves--Mary Stuart in a black velvet coif, and a ruff--each and all adorable--on a pretty woman."

"On a pretty woman--yes. The pretty women set the fashions and the ugly women have to wear them--that's the difficulty."

"Ah, me," sighed the Baron, "did any one ever see an ugly woman? There are so many degrees of beauty that it takes a long time to get from Venus to her opposite. A smile--a sparkle--a kindly look--a fresh complexion--a neat bonnet--vivacious conversation--such trifles will pa.s.s for beauty with a man who worships the s.e.x. For him every flower in the garden of womanhood, from the imperial rose to the lowly b.u.t.tercup, has its own peculiar charm."

"And yet I should have thought you were awfully fastidious," said Mopsy, trifling with the newspapers, "and that nothing short of absolute perfection would please you."

"Absolute perfection is generally a bore. I have met famous beauties who had no more attraction than if they had been famous statues."

"Yes; I know there is a cold kind of beauty--but there are women who are as fascinating as they are lovely. Our hostess, for instance--don't you think her utterly sweet?"

"She is very lovely. Do come and sit by the fire. It is such a creepy morning. I'll hunt for any newspapers you like presently; but in the meanwhile let us chat. I was getting horribly tired of my own thoughts when you came in."

Mopsy simpered, and sat down in the easy chair opposite the Baron's. She began to think that this delightful person admired her more than she had hitherto supposed. His desire for her company looked promising. What if, after all, she, who had striven so much less eagerly than poor Dopsy strove last year, should be on the high road to a conquest. Here was the handsomest man she had ever met, a man with t.i.tle and money, courting her society in a house full of people.

"Yes, she is altogether charming," said the Baron lazily, as if he were talking merely for the sake of conversation. "Very sweet, as you say, but not quite my style--there is a something--an intangible something wanting. She has _chic_--she has _savoir-faire_; but she has not--no, she has not that electrical wit which--which I have admired in others less conventionally beautiful."

The Baron's half-veiled smile, a smile glancing from under lowered eyelids, hinted that this vital spark which was wanting in Christabel might be found in Mopsy.

The damsel blushed, and looked down, conscious of eyelashes artistically treated.

"I don't think Mrs. Tregonell has been quite happy in her married life,"

said Mopsy. "My brother and Mr. Tregonell are very old friends, don't you know; like brothers, in fact; and Mr. Tregonell tells Jack everything. I know his cousin didn't want to marry him--she was engaged to somebody else, don't you know, and that engagement was broken off, but he had set his heart upon marrying her--and his mother had set her heart upon the match--and between them they talked her into it. She never really wanted to marry him--Leonard has owned that to Jack in his savage moods. But I ought not to run on so--I am doing very wrong"--said Mopsy, hastily.

"You may say anything you please to me. I am like the grave. I never give up a secret," said the Baron, who had settled himself comfortably in his chair, a.s.sured that Mopsy, once set going, would tell him all she could tell.

"No, I don't believe--from what Jack says he says in his tempers--I don't believe she ever liked him," pursued Mopsy. "And she was desperately in love with the other one. But she gave him up at her aunt's instigation, because of some early intrigue of his--which was absurd, as she would have known, poor thing, if she had not been brought up in this out-of-the-way corner of the world."

"The other one. Who was the other one?" asked the Baron.

"The man who was shot at St. Nectan's Kieve last year. You must have heard the story."

"Yes; Mr. St. Aubyn told me about it. And this Mr. Hamleigh had been engaged to Mrs. Tregonell? Odd that he should be staying in this house!"

"Wasn't it? One of those odd things that Leonard Tregonell is fond of doing. He was always eccentric."

"And during this visit was there anything--the best of women are mortal--was there anything in the way of a flirtation going on between Mrs. Tregonell and her former sweetheart?"

"Not a shadow of impropriety," answered Mopsy heartily. "She behaved perfectly. I knew the story from my brother, and couldn't help watching them--there was nothing underhand--not the faintest indication of a secret understanding between them."

"And Mr. Tregonell was not jealous?"

"I cannot say; but I am sure he had no cause."

"I suppose Mrs. Tregonell was deeply affected by Mr. Hamleigh's death?"

"I hardly know. She seemed wonderfully calm; but as we left almost immediately after the accident I had not much opportunity of judging."

"A sad business. A lovely woman married to a man she does not care for--and really if I were not a visitor under his roof I should be tempted to say that in my opinion no woman in her senses could care for Mr. Tregonell. But I suppose after all practical considerations had something to do with the match. Tregonell is lord of half-a-dozen manors--and the lady hadn't a sixpence. Was that it?"

"Not at all. Mrs. Tregonell has money in her own right. She was the only child of an Indian judge, and her mother was co-heiress with the late Mrs. Tregonell, who was a Miss Champernowne--I believe she has at least fifteen hundred a year, upon which a single woman might live very comfortably, don't you know," concluded Miss Vandeleur with a grand air.

"No doubt," said the Baron. "And the fortune was settled on herself, I conclude?"

"Every shilling. Mr. Tregonell's mother insisted upon that. No doubt she felt it her duty to protect her niece's interest. Mr. Tregonell has complained to Jack of his wife being so independent. It lessens his hold upon her, don't you see."

"Naturally. She is not under any obligation to him for her milliner's bills."

"No. And her bills must be awfully heavy this year. I never saw such a change in any one. Last autumn she dressed so simply. A tailor-gown in the morning--black velvet or satin in the evening. And now there is no end to the variety of her gowns. It makes one feel awfully shabby."

"Such artistic toilets as yours can never be shabby," said the Baron.

"In looking at a picture by Greuze one does not think how much a yard the pale indefinite drapery cost, one only sees the grace and beauty of the draping."

"True; taste will go a long way," a.s.sented Mopsy, who had been trying for the last ten years to make taste--that is to say a careful study of the west-end shop-windows--do duty for cash.

"Then you find Mrs. Tregonell changed since your last visit?" inquired de Cazalet, bent upon learning all he could.

"Remarkably. She is so much livelier--she seems so much more anxious to please. It is a change altogether for the better. She seems gayer--brighter--happier."

"Yes," thought the Baron, "she is in love. Only one magician works such wonders, and he is the oldest of the G.o.ds--the motive power of the universe."

The gong sounded, and they went off to lunch. At the foot of the stairs they met Christabel bringing down her boy. She was not so devoted to him as she had been last year, but there were occasions--like this wet morning, for instance--when she gave herself up to his society.

"Leo is going to eat his dinner with us," she said, smiling at the Baron, "if you will not think him a nuisance."

"On the contrary, I shall be charmed to improve his acquaintance. I hope he will let me sit next him."

"Thant," lisped Leo decisively. "Don't like oo."

"Oh, Leo, how rude."

"Don't reprove him," said the Baron. "It is a comfort to be reminded that for the first three or four years of our lives we all tell the truth. But I mean you to like me, Leo, all the same."

"I hate 'oo," said Leo, frankly--he always expressed himself in strong Saxon English--"but 'oo love my mamma."

This, in a shrill childish treble, was awkward for the rest of the party. Mrs. Fairfax Torrington gave an arch glance at Mr. FitzJesse.

Dopsy reddened, and exploded in a little spluttering laugh behind her napkin. Christabel looked divinely unconscious, smiling down at her boy, whose chair had been placed at the corner of the table close to his mother.