rdinary one, an attempt to rouse the
swift jealousy of the male animal. She was certainly "up" to all
the usual feminine tricks. He thoroughly realized her vanity and,
contrasting it with Lady Sellingworth's apparently almost careless lack
of self-consciousness, he wondered whether Lady Sellingworth could ever
have been what she was said to have been. If so, as a snake sheds its
skin she must surely have sloughed her original nature. He was thankful
for that, thankful for her absolute lack of pose and vanity. He even
delighted in her self-mockery, divined by him. So few woman mocked at
themselves and so many mocked at others.

If Miss Van Tuyn had intended to give a flick to his jealousy at the end
of her letter she had failed. If she met fifty living bronzes and added
them to her collection it was nothing to him. He compared his feeling
when Braybrooke had suggested Seymour Portman as a husband for Lady
Sellingworth with his lack of feeling about Miss Van Tuyn and her
bronze, and he was almost startled. And yet Miss Van Tuyn was lovely and
certainly did not want him to go quite away out of her ken. And, when
she chose, she had made him very foolish about her.

What did it all mean?

He wrote a little letter in answer to hers, charmingly polite, but
rather vague about Soho. At the end of it, before signing himself
"Yours"--he could do no less with her letter before him--he put, "I
feel rather intrigued about the living bronze. Was it in petticoats or
trousers?"

CHAPTER IV

Craven had been right in his supposition about the world's governess.
Braybrooke had gone away from the Club that evening firmly persuaded
that his young friend had done the almost unbelievable thing, had fallen
in love with Adela Sellingworth. He was really perturbed about it.
A tremulous sense of the fitness of things governed his whole life,
presided as it were over all his actions and even over most of his
thoughts. He instinctively shrank from everything that was bizarre,
from everything that was, as he called it, "out of keeping." He
was responsible for the introduction of young Craven into Adela
Sellingworth's life. It would be very unfortunate indeed, it would be
almost disastrous, if the result of that well-meant introduction were to
be a preposterous passion!

When the effect of the two cocktails had subsided he tried to convince
himself that he was giving way to undue anxiety, that there was really
nothing in his supposition ex