such fascination, was she to desert him,
and also to desert herself? From day to day she thought of it, and
then she wrote that letter. She hardly knew what she would do, what
she might say; but she would trust to the opportunity to do and say
something.

"If you have no room for me," he said to Mrs. Jones, "you must scold
Lady Mab. She has told me that you told her to invite me."

"Of course I did. Do you think I would not sleep in the stables, and
give you up my own bed if there were no other? It is so good of you
to come!"

"So good of you, Mrs. Jones, to ask me."

"So very kind to come when all the attraction has gone!" Then he
blushed and stammered, and was just able to say that his only object
in life was to pour out his adoration at the feet of Mrs. Montacute
Jones herself.

There was a certain Lady Fawn,--a pretty mincing married woman
of about twenty-five, with a husband much older, who liked mild
flirtations with mild young men. "I am afraid we've lost your great
attraction," she whispered to him.

"Certainly not as long as Lady Fawn is here," he said, seating
himself close to her on a garden bench, and seizing suddenly hold
of her hand. She gave a little scream and a jerk, and so relieved
herself from him. "You see," said he, "people do make such mistakes
about a man's feelings."

"Lord Silverbridge!"

"It's quite true, but I'll tell you all about it another time," and
so he left her. All these little troubles, his experience in the
"House," the necessity of snubbing Tifto, the choice of a wife, and
his battle with Reginald Dobbes, were giving him by degrees age and
flavour.

Lady Mabel had fluttered about him on his first coming, and had been
very gracious, doing the part of an old friend. "There is to be a big
shooting to-morrow," she said, in the presence of Mrs. Jones.

"If it is to come to that," he said, "I might as well go back to
Dobbydom."

"You may shoot if you like," said Lady Mabel.

"I haven't even brought a gun with me."

"Then we'll have a walk,--a whole lot of us," she said.

In the evening, about an hour before dinner, Silverbridge and Lady
Mabel were seated together on the bank of a little stream which ran
on the other side of the road, but on a spot not more than a furlong
from the hall-door. She had brought him there, but she had done so
without any definite scheme. She had made no plan of campaign for the
evening, having felt relieved when she found herself able to pos