ing as good as an incantation summons, he produced the
accustomed sprite, giving her sally for sally. Queens govern the
polite. Popularity with men, serviceable as it is for winning
favouritism with women, is of poor value to a sensitive gentleman,
anxious even to prognostic apprehension on behalf of his pride, his
comfort and his prevalence. And men are grossly purchasable; good wines
have them, good cigars, a goodfellow air: they are never quite worth
their salt even then; you can make head against their ill looks. But
the looks of women will at one blow work on you the downright
difference which is between the cock of lordly plume and the moulting.
Happily they may be gained: a clever tongue will gain them, a leg. They
are with you to a certainty if Nature is with you; if you are elegant
and discreet: if the sun is on you, and they see you shining in it; or
if they have seen you well-stationed and handsome in the sun. And once
gained they are your mirrors for life, and far more constant than the
glass. That tale of their caprice is absurd. Hit their imaginations
once, they are your slaves, only demanding common courtier service of
you. They will deny that you are ageing, they will cover you from
scandal, they will refuse to see you ridiculous. Sir Willoughby's
instinct, or skin, or outfloating feelers, told him of these mysteries
of the influence of the sex; he had as little need to study them as a
lady breathed on.

He had some need to know them in fact; and with him the need of a
protection for himself called it forth; he was intuitively a conjurer
in self-defence, long-sighted, wanting no directions to the herb he was
to suck at when fighting a serpent. His dulness of vision into the
heart of his enemy was compensated by the agile sensitiveness obscuring
but rendering him miraculously active, and, without supposing his need
immediate, he deemed it politic to fascinate Mrs. Mountstuart and
anticipate ghastly possibilities in the future by dropping a hint; not
of Clara's fickleness, you may be sure; of his own, rather; or, more
justly, of an altered view of Clara's character. He touched on the
rogue in porcelain.

Set gently laughing by his relishing humour. "I get nearer to it," he
said.

"Remember I'm in love with her," said Mrs. Mountstuart.

"That is our penalty."

"A pleasant one for you."

He assented. "Is the 'rogue' to be eliminated?"

"Ask when she's a mother, my dear Sir Willoughby."

"This is h