Unmoved as he was, as a rule, by women's tears, he felt that these, coming as they did from such a proud spirit, were almost like blood issuing from a wound.

"And now what will you think of me?" she said at last, lifting her head, and drying her eyes. "Now that you have heard how unwomanly I am, how wicked, how criminally wicked! Because, I suppose, morally speaking, to lie awake and scheme out one's sister's disfigurement is as bad as to accomplish it."

He smiled. "You don't imagine, do you," he said, "that I am so thoroughly modern and romantic as to turn away from an eagle when I find it has not only angel's wings but also claws?"

She laughed. "How did you manage to know so much about me?" she demanded. "Ordinary men know and understand nothing. They would be shocked and horrified, if I spoke to them about my sister as I have spoken to you. How do you know these things?"

"There is much less difference between human beings than one thinks," he replied. "To know one decent man and one decent woman well, is to be intimately acquainted with the rest of the decent world, I can assure you."

"How I dreaded that anybody should know!" she exclaimed, "and yet how simple it all seems to me now that you should know!"

"And now why don't you go and lie down for a bit," he said.

She rose, and without looking back at him, walked towards the house. Her gait was lighter, more assured, more self-confident. It was the gait of one who had ceased to run the gauntlet.

CHAPTER XIV

It wanted an hour and a half to lunch time. Mrs. Delarayne appeared to have left "The Fastness," and Lord Henry was alone in the garden, meditating and maturing his plans.

A strange and pleasant titillation of all his nerves, somewhat similar to that which in the morning convinces a man that he has had a refreshing and healing sleep, seemed to hint to him that here he was not the usual neuropathic therapeutist of Ashbury fame, not a mere specialist spectator, but an acting figure, a participator in this family affair. Could it be his old and deep-rooted admiration for Mrs.

Delarayne that made him feel this hearty concern about a patient's condition?

He yawned lazily and stretched himself in the fierce August sunlight.

Cleopatra's empty chair brought back to him her queenly presence, her passionate confession, and the thought of what it must have cost her. He felt a primitive and violent impulse to perform miracles for the girl whose health and happiness, out of blind friendship for her mother, he had undertaken to protect. He even felt prepared to go to greater lengths in rescuing her self-esteem than he would ever have dared to go with other people. For, to become normal again, he knew that her self-esteem must be revived.

Suddenly, in the midst of his meditations, the sound of somebody approaching from the direction of the house made him turn his head. It was Mrs. Delarayne, and, some distance behind her, the whole of "The Fastness" and Brineweald Park party.

He rose with alacrity and, seizing her by the arm, led her across the lawn to the far end of the garden.

"Quick," he said, "before the others join us."

She followed, looking up at him with the deepest interest.

"Do you want Leonetta to marry Malster?" he demanded.

"Oh no, most certainly not!" cried the widow with angry emphasis.

"Anything but that. I have taken the most profound dislike to him. That must be avoided at all costs. The child doesn't know her own mind.

Besides, he doesn't deserve her, and Cleopatra's feelings have surely been outraged enough. No, most emphatically not. She would only learn to despise him in a couple of months. In fact, I believe Sir Joseph is dismissing him from Bullion's."

"I thought you would take that view," he said. "You are not forgetting, I suppose, that they are very much in love with each other."

"In love!" she exclaimed. "Why, Leonetta would fall in love with a stuffed owl at present, provided it could dance attendance on her."

He grunted. "Now one thing more. Do you agree with me that, beautiful, fascinating, and bewitching as Leonetta undoubtedly is, she would be all the better for realising for once that she cannot have everything her own way?"

"She's an over-confident little hussy," ejaculated Mrs. Delarayne. "I've tried to make her feel that myself, but parents are not much good at that sort of thing. Children think we do it out of spite, you know.

That's what I used to think of my own mother."

"It would make her deeper, more reflective, more desirable."

"Certainly," agreed the widow.

"Now let us go back," said the young man, and they returned to the others who had settled themselves round the marquee.

"Ah, here's Lord Henry!" Vanessa cried. "We'll ask him what he thinks!"

Leonetta was silent, because the difference of opinion concerned Denis, and she could not take sides against him. So she contented herself with observing Lord Henry in that grave, interested manner, which is always a sign that something deeper than consciousness is taking stock of an object.

The moment Lord Henry had settled himself in a chair, Stephen Fearwell, who was at the stage of distant and inarticulate adoration towards him, dropped on the grass in front of him, at Agatha's feet, and contemplated him with grave interest.

Stimulated pleasantly as he had been by his interview with Cleopatra, Lord Henry was still enough of a youth and a man to feel equally moved by the subtle influence of the beautiful girls and the silent young men about him. This was just the situation in which experience had always taught him he could shine to the best advantage, and in which his formidable weapons could be wielded with the finest effect.

"We are discussing poetry, Lord Henry," said Guy Tyrrell.

"Yes," said Stephen a little shyly, "those two fellows Guy and Denis have had a fit of indigestion I should think; they've been talking about what they call Victorian verse the whole morning. Look, Denis has got his Browning with him still. You don't like poetry, do you?" Stephen blushed a little. It was his first long and direct appeal to the man he had been secretly admiring ever since the previous evening.

"But I do very much indeed!" Lord Henry protested.

Miss Mallowcoid, Leonetta, Denis, and Guy laughed triumphantly at this, and Vanessa, Stephen, Agatha, and Sir Joseph stirred awkwardly.

"We're just four against four,--isn't it funny?" cried Vanessa, jerking Sir Joseph's arm in which hers was locked. "Of course the Tribes are on our side too, but they stayed at Stonechurch shopping."

"So I'm to give the casting vote, am I?" Lord Henry enquired.

"Yes, yes!" exclaimed Vanessa, clapping her hands eagerly, "and you'll give it to us, won't you, Lord Henry! Please!"

Leonetta regarded her schoolmate with grave disapproval, and as she glanced down at her hands, raised her eyebrows in grieved surprise.

"Well," said Denis, "you see, Lord Henry, I've been telling these people about the curious decline in poetry reading, and in the appreciation of poetry, which is noticeable nowadays."

"I confess I never read it," Sir Joseph averred. "I can never make out what the fellow's driving at, turning everything upside down and inside out!"

Vanessa cried "Hear, hear!" and the baronet laughed uproariously.

"'Ow can people read the stuff?" he pursued.

"I can't read it," said Stephen, "because it entirely fails to interest me."

"I can't read it," Agatha declared, "because it all seems to me mere beautiful words."

"Chiefly archaic!" added Stephen.

"I never read it," Vanessa observed, "because you have to wade through such quantities of stuff before you can find anything worth remembering."

Miss Mallowcoid, Leonetta, Guy, and Denis laughed.