"Yes--rather!"

"Well, that's what Lord Henry makes me feel. And what's more, he has a ripping way of putting things scientifically to you. He never flatters you. He proves to you on scientific principles that you are one of the best,--do you understand?"

Vanessa was delighted, and, strange as it may seem, so was Leonetta; an unusual coincidence of sentiment in these two flappers--for Vanessa had not long ceased from being a flapper--which foreboded no good to any one.

The following day broke dull and wet for the inhabitants of Brineweald, and for the first hour of the morning the rain was sufficiently heavy to keep the two households apart.

Lord Henry was therefore thrown on the company of Sir Joseph's party, and he entertained them, or perhaps disturbed them, as they digested their breakfast, by discussing various aspects of English matrimonial arrangements. He had ruminated overnight the principle that Mrs.

Delarayne had laid down in regard to Leonetta,--"that she was much too good for Denis Malster,"--and he was beginning to see that it was entirely justified.

"It is a pity," he declared, addressing Miss Mallowcoid, "that it is almost impossible in this country to arrange matches. I don't see why you can't, but you can't."

Denis Malster, Guy, and the Tribes dropped their newspapers, and Sir Joseph doing likewise, regarded the young nobleman with a perplexed frown.

"Think of the terrible responsibility!" exclaimed Miss Mallowcoid.

"Yes, but that should not deter us,--surely!" Lord Henry rejoined.

"Everything relating to parenthood is responsibility, why shirk that last duty of all?"

"But they wouldn't let us," Miss Mallowcoid objected.

"Because they don't trust you," Lord Henry replied. "That must be the reason. They have learned not to trust the mature adult. British parents are either too indolent, or too incompetent to do the thing properly.

And the consequence is young people have been trained by tradition to believe that, in the matter of choosing their mates, concerning which they know literally nothing, and are taught less, they must be left to their own silly romantic devices."

"But look at the results!" said Miss Mallowcoid. "Surely the arrangement works."

"Does it? That's precisely what I question," Lord Henry cried.

"You don't mean to say, do you," Denis Malster enquired, "that you would accept a wife chosen for you by your parents?"

"If they were equipped with the necessary knowledge and insight, most certainly," Lord Henry retorted.

"So it comes to this," said Mrs. Tribe, "that our matrimonial system in this country is based upon our parents' lack of the necessary knowledge and insight."

"Precisely!" Lord Henry exclaimed. "Otherwise they would shoulder the responsibility cheerfully."

"Nonsense!" snapped Miss Mallowcoid.

"I agree with you," added Denis, turning a smiling face to the old spinster.

"Why, it's our idea of liberty,--that's what it is!" Miss Mallowcoid averred.

"Yes; the liberty to do and think the wrong thing nine times out of ten," was Lord Henry's comment.

Denis Malster rose and went to the window. "Well, I should like the weather to clear," he said, "so that we could set about doing something a little more interesting than this."

Miss Mallowcoid and Sir Joseph laughed. The open hostility that was growing between Lord Henry and the baronet's secretary enabled them to get many a thrust at the former without so much as grazing their knuckles.

Lord Henry chuckled. "It is curious," he said quietly, "how doing something, nowadays, is always assumed to be more interesting than thinking something."

"But you used to be so fond of arguing, Mr. Malster," Mrs. Tribe suggested with a malicious smile.

Denis grew hot about the ears, and the Incandescent Gerald, who had a forgiving heart, frowned reprovingly at his wife.

"Yes, but one gets frightfully sick of hearing one's country and its institutions constantly run down," said Denis, casting a malevolent glance at Lord Henry. "My country, right or wrong, is what I say."

"Hear, hear!" cried Miss Mallowcoid. "That's very true."

"Yes, and very immoral," Lord Henry murmured. "It is the motto of decadence. It means that the moment the Union Jack is unfurled, the voice of criticism, the intellect, and the first principles of justice and honest self-analysis, must be stifled."

"Hullo! there's a streak of blue in the sky, and there's 'The Fastness'

_en bloc_!" cried Denis, very much relieved at the sight of his master's car bearing all Mrs. Delarayne's household.

Everybody went on to the terrace to meet them, and one by one, the ladies, with Stephen in the rear, came up the steps in their mackintoshes.

Lord Henry noticed how amply Leonetta's frame filled her smart rain-coat, and yet how sylph-like she appeared by the side of the rather more heavy Jewess.

"Let's go for a walk!" she cried, as she greeted the men.

"Yes!" sang Cleopatra, Vanessa, Stephen, and Guy in chorus.

Denis, wishing the invitation had not been so general, endeavoured to get Leonetta to speak to him for a moment alone, but she sedulously thwarted his manoeuvres.

"I'm dead!" exclaimed Mrs. Delarayne. "The dance was too much for me. If anybody killed me now they couldn't justly be charged with taking human life. Don't ask me to stir till lunch."

The younger people, including the Tribes, therefore agreed to defy the weather and to walk to Sandlewood and back before luncheon, and, in a few minutes the whole party was ready: Lord Henry with Cleopatra, Agatha and Stephen in the van, Leonetta and Vanessa with Denis and Mr. Tribe next, and Mrs. Tribe and Guy Tyrrell in the rear.

Nothing of very great interest happened on the walk to Sandlewood, and common subjects of conversation sped backwards and forwards in snatches, from the front to the rear of the party, interrupted only by laughter and occasional barely audible comments, which were intended for the benefit of only one section.

As usual Cleopatra and Lord Henry found it extremely difficult to rise above the barest platitudes in their talk to each other, and Agatha was astonished at the emptiness of their conversation. It was partly owing to this fact that Lord Henry would occasionally start a subject, like a wave, rolling back over the heads of those behind him, so that the acute embarrassment that he and Cleopatra felt in each other's presence might be slightly relieved by the unconscious participation of the others in their _tete-a-tete_.

Cleopatra was perfectly well now, and appeared supremely happy. But she still kept her eyes on the ground, and responded almost with nervous agitation to Lord Henry's remarks. It was as if she felt their perfunctory nature, their conspicuous jejuneness, and nevertheless, like him, was utterly unable to broach the discussion of more serious things.

Stephen, too, was a little disappointed with his hero, and wondered what could have come over him, that he should suddenly have grown as commonplace as Sir Joseph himself. He constantly looked back with curious longing, as the laughter from behind became more persistent, and it was only hope still undefeated that made him cling to Lord Henry's side.

When a man on a walk calls the attention of his companions to the condition of the hedges; when he notices that the road wants mending, or that the ditches are either clean or overgrown; when, moreover, he comments on the early discolouration of the leaves of certain distant trees, it can clearly be due only to one of two causes: either his conversation never rises above the level of such subjects, or else, some influence is active which has so severely shaken his composure as to leave him utterly destitute of thought.

If women divine, even half-consciously, that the latter is the reason, they are, however, patient and tolerant, where his temporary stupidity is concerned. But Stephen was not a woman, neither was Agatha half-consciously aware of the true cause of Lord Henry's transient dullness.

On the way home there was a general shuffling of the members of the party, and to Lord Henry's relief, Leonetta, Mrs. Tribe, and Guy Tyrrell sprang eagerly to his side, while Agatha, Cleopatra, and Stephen joined Denis, Vanessa, and the Incandescent Gerald in front.

Cleopatra's persistent and yet unaffected affability to Denis had now become one of the added terrors of Brineweald to this unfortunate young man, and what struck him as particularly strange was that the more animated and hilarious became the conversation behind, between Lord Henry and Leonetta, the more perfectly natural and cheerful did Cleopatra appear to grow. He had done his utmost to convey to Leonetta on the walk out that he insisted on her returning with him at her side.

He hoped that the girl had seen what he himself thought he perceived--that is to say, a growing intimacy between Lord Henry and her sister,--and that this would induce her to do as he desired. Leonetta, however, was at times unaccountably dense. She had escaped from him at Sandlewood, and, to his utter bewilderment, the sound of her voice now, in animated converse with Lord Henry, seemed to leave Cleopatra entirely unperturbed.

Had Cleopatra hopes?