that is a coquette's chiefest sugar-plum."

"I believe I did talk about himself--naturally, as I have always been
a great admirer of his work, and the very inexperience you mention
makes me seize upon such subjects as I know anything about."

Lady Mary went forward and put her arm about her new friend's waist.
"Let us take a turn in the orchard before it is time to retire," she
said. "I long to talk to you about our new acquaintance. Try to devise
a plan to bring him here daily," she said over her shoulder to the
complacent hostess; and to Lord Hunsdon, "Will you come for us in a
quarter of an hour?"

It was only of late that Lady Mary had determined to lay away in
lavender the luxury of sorrow. When a woman is thirty ambition looms
as an excellent substitute for romance, and there had been unexpected
opportunities to charm a wealthy peer during the past five weeks. She
hated poetry and thought this poet a horror, but he was an excellent
weapon in the siege of Hunsdon Towers. She was not jealous of Anne,
for she divined that Hunsdon's suit, if suit it were, was hopeless,
and believed that her new friend's good nature would help her to win
the prize of a dozen seasons. So she refreshed her complexion with
buttermilk and spirits of wine, and made love to Anne; who saw through
her manoeuvres but was quite willing to further them if it would
save herself the ordeal of refusing Lord Hunsdon.

CHAPTER VII

On the following evening there was so much more dancing than usual--a
number of officers had come over from St. Kitts--that the saloon was
deserted by the young people, and at the height of the impromptu ball
Anne found herself alone near one of the open windows. The older
people were intent upon cards. Anne, who had grown bolder since her
first appearance in the world, now close upon three weeks ago, obeyed
an impulse to step through the window, descended the terrace and
walked along the beach. She could have gone to her room and found the
solitude she craved, but she wanted movement, and the night was so
beautiful that it called to her irresistibly. The moon was at the
full, she could see the blue of the sea under its crystal flood. The
blades of the palm trees glittered like sinister weapons unsheathed.
She could outline every leaf of palm, cocoanut, and banana that
fringed the shore. The nightingales ceased their warbling and she
heard that other and still more enchanting music of a tropic night,
the tiny