"Because we can trust the young men," suggested Sir Joseph.

"Not a bit of it!--because both men and girls are usually so very much below par temperamentally that they can exercise what is called 'self-control,'--that is to say their passions are relied upon always to be weaker than their 'self-control'."

Sir Joseph was by now utterly bewildered.

"We allow our daughters to exercise the most heartless rivalry one against the other in the matrimonial field--why?"

Sir Joseph, who imagined that the young nobleman was growing impatient with him, did not venture to reply.

"Because," continued Lord Henry, "we know perfectly well that they are too tame, too mild, too listless about life, ever to become homicidal in their hatred of one another. The moment two deep, eager and adorable girls, like these daughters of Mrs. Delarayne, walk on to our English boards, our whole fabric, our whole scenery, and stage machinery, is shown to be wrong to the last screw. God! How different this country must have been when Shakespeare was able to say that thing about one touch of nature! Now one touch of nature in England sets the whole world by the ears!"

"Is Cleopatra very bad then?" Sir Joseph enquired anxiously.

"So bad that she would have been suicidal if steps had not been taken immediately. You see it isn't everybody who is so lukewarm, so anaemic, as to make a cheerful old maid. Cheery old maids are the condemnation of modern English womanhood Their frequency in England shows the shallowness of the average modern woman's passion. Among all warm-blooded peoples old maids are known to be bitter, resentful, untractable and misanthropic."

"Are they really?" exclaimed Sir Joseph. "I didn't know that."

Mrs. Delarayne came towards them.

"Lord Henry," she cried, "Cleopatra is coming to lunch. You have already done wonders with her. At least she wants to be well now. That's a great triumph."

The remainder of the party now came up the garden towards the house.

"Lord Henry!" Leonetta cried, skipping up to his side, bearing a kitten.

"Do you like cats? Look at this little angel!"

Lord Henry, without looking at her, raised a hand deprecatingly.

"We are not out of the wood yet," he murmured in an aside to Mrs.

Delarayne.

"Oh, she's scratching,--do look at her, Lord Henry!" Leonetta exclaimed, a little over anxiously this time, as she was not used to having her self-advertising manoeuvres disregarded in this manner.

"Yes," said Lord Henry with cold courtesy, glancing at the kitten only for a moment, and then quickly resuming his conversation with his hostess.

Leonetta, swallowing something in her throat, skipped with a somewhat forced affectation of childish gaiety in the direction of the house.

Lord Henry, Denis, and Vanessa, however, were the only three of the party who correctly interpreted her action, though they appeared to be engaged with other matters.

After dinner that day, when the cool of a midsummer evening had fallen on Brineweald Park, and Cleopatra had been despatched to her bed by her new spiritual adviser, Mrs. Delarayne, Sir Joseph, Miss Mallowcoid, and Gerald Tribe sat down to Bridge on the terrace, Lord Henry invited Agatha to show him over the grounds, and Mrs. Tribe and Stephen went to the billiard room.

A moment before Lord Henry had descended the steps with his companion, he had seen Vanessa and Guy Tyrrell depart mysteriously in the direction of the woods, and Denis and Leonetta vanish just as mysteriously towards Headlinge.

For the purpose he had in view, he would have preferred Vanessa for his companion, more especially as he had noticed that she went reluctantly with Tyrrell, but he had missed securing her by a minute, thanks to Mrs.

Delarayne's garrulousness.

He stood at the foot of the steps. It mattered not to him whither Vanessa and her companion were bound, and observing the direction Denis and Leonetta were taking, he walked slowly along the path to Headstone, which was exposed for the greater length of its course, and promised to keep him constantly in their view.

"This way, Lord Henry," said Agatha, starting in the direction of Headlinge.

"No, if you don't mind," he said, "I prefer this path. I like the sweep of the hill to the right. These vast stretches of grass at this hour always make me feel that I am walking on the edge of a carpet, on which the elves and the fairies are having their revels."

The girl acquiesced. The two figures to the left, on the road to Headlinge, buried themselves in a wooded grove, and the girl glanced a little apprehensively in their direction, as she caught the last glimpse of them.

"Denis and Leonetta are on the road to Headlinge," she said simply.

"Oh, are they?" replied Lord Henry. "Can you see them then?"

"No," she answered. "They are somewhere behind those trees."

Two proposals of marriage were made that evening in Brineweald Park. One was flatly declined; the result of the other was doubtful. The love-sick swains were Denis Malster and Guy Tyrrell, and their respective companions we know.

Guy Tyrrell, who was of the breed who scarcely ever receive a spontaneous kindly look from women, without offering something very substantial in exchange, was feeling that romantic passion for the voluptuous Jewess, which the sun and the plentiful food at Brineweald, had no doubt done an immense deal to fan to a flame in his breast. He had recognised very early that with Malster about, he stood no chance with Leonetta, and he found that had it not been for Leonetta's occupying the central place, he would have stood just as bad a chance with Vanessa. For two days now, moreover, he had been observing Vanessa lavishing her attentions on Sir Joseph, and utterly harmless though the old baronet was, Guy had been conscious of certain intolerable pangs when he had seen the girl's shapely little brown hands in the City magnate's, and her strong nicely rounded forearm enlocked in his master's.

Tremulously, therefore, but with studious persistency, he had that evening repeatedly whispered the request to her that she should walk out to the woods with him, and she, casting a longing glance first at Lord Henry, then at Denis Malster, had reluctantly acquiesced. Her curiosity was possibly awakened too; at all events she went, when she had no pressing need to go, and incidentally received the entertainment she deserved.

He was agitated, as all "clean-minded" young men are, whose amorous passions have for once got the better of their qualms, and he breathed very heavily,--rather like a draft-ox at the turn of the plough. He was gauche, timid, thoroughly unskilled in the art of wooing, not even up to the wiles of the most guileless male animal or bird; and Vanessa felt only a sensation of extreme discomfiture as he blurted out his longings to her.

"No, really not!" she exclaimed. "I'm sorry, but I had no idea you felt like that about me."

He caught her arms. His hand was very hot, and she felt it through the gauze of her sleeve.

She turned back quickly. "Come on," she said, "let's get back to the house. They'll wonder what on earth we're doing."

He dropped his hand to hers, and pulled on it slightly.

"Listen," he pleaded. "Stop a minute and listen."

She screwed her hand deftly out of his, and drew aside.

"Oh, please leave me alone, Guy!" she cried. "It's no good. I couldn't dream of it. I'm never going to marry."

Still he persisted incoherently, unattractively, and with the increasing daring of swelling desire.

"No, I tell you," she ejaculated, laughing a little nervously. "Can't you take 'no' for an answer? You are not going to annoy me just because we happen to be alone, are you?"

He dropped his hands to his side, and was silent.

"Now, don't let's say any more about it," said Vanessa, feeling very much relieved. She had the sound instinct that informed her that this man's "clean-mindedness" was revolting, and breathed fast and irregularly at the thought of the danger she imagined she had been in.

If he had kissed her with those uneloquent and untrained lips of his, impure in their purity, she would never have forgiven herself.

"Look at the moon," she said, as she strode rapidly back to the house.

"It is beginning to wane. I wonder if the weather will change with it."

And so they reached the terrace,--she feeling that she wanted a wash; he feeling only that he had bungled it, because she was too worldly, too sophisticated to be natural.