dispense with witty women, and, for that
matter, witty men. The intrusion of the spontaneous on the stereotyped
would have clashed. She preferred, as hostess, the old legal anecdotes
sure of their laugh, and the citations from the manufactories of fun in
the Press, which were current and instantly intelligible to all her
guests. She smiled suavely on an impromptu pun, because her experience of
the humorous appreciation of it by her guests bade her welcome the
upstart. Nothing else impromptu was acceptable. Mrs. Warwick therefore
was not missed by Lady Wathin. 'I have met her,' she said. 'I confess I
am not one of the fanatics about Mrs. Warwick. She has a sort of skill in
getting men to clamour. If you stoop to tickle them, they will applaud.
It is a way of winning a reputation.' When the ladies were separated from
the gentlemen by the stream of Claret, Miss Asper heard Lady Wathin speak
of Mrs. Warwick again. An allusion to Lord Dannisburgh's fit of illness
in the House of Lords led to her saying that there was no doubt he had
been fascinated, and that, in her opinion, Mrs. Warwick was a dangerous
woman. Sir Cramborne knew something of Mr. Warwick; 'Poor man!' she
added. A lady present put a question concerning Mrs. Warwick's beauty.
'Yes,' Lady Wathin said, 'she has good looks to aid her. Judging from
what I hear and have seen, her thirst is for notoriety. Sooner or later
we shall have her making a noise, you may be certain. Yes, she has the
secret of dressing well--in the French style.'

A simple newspaper report of the expedition of a Nileboat party could
stir the Powers to take her up and turn her on their wheel in this
manner.

But others of the sons and daughters of London were regretting her
prolonged absence. The great and exclusive Whitmonby, who had dined once
at Lady Wathin's table, and vowed never more to repeat that offence to
his patience, lamented bitterly to Henry Wilmers that the sole woman
worthy of sitting at a little Sunday evening dinner with the cream of the
choicest men of the time was away wasting herself in that insane modern
chase of the picturesque! He called her a perverted Celimene.

Redworth had less to regret than the rest of her male friends, as he was
receiving at intervals pleasant descriptive letters, besides manuscript
sheets of ANTONIA'S new piece of composition, to correct the proofs for
the press, and he read them critically, he thought. He read them with a
watchful eye to guard