fore, her rashness had well-nigh brought her face to
face with Gregory of Tours as a topic of conversation.

But she was not daunted long. With little airs and bridlings infinitely
diverting, she exchanged inquiry for the most beguiling confidence. She
could appreciate 'clever men,' she said, for she--she too--was literary.
Did Mr. Elsmere know--this in a hurried whisper, with sidelong glances
to see that Mr. Wynnstay was safely occupied with Rose, and the squire
with Lady Charlotte--that she had once _written a novel_?

Robert, who had been posted up in many things concerning the
neighbourhood by Lady Helen Varley, could answer most truly that he had.
Whereupon Mrs. Darcy beamed all over.

'Ah! but you haven't read it,' she said regretfully. 'It was when I was
Maid of Honour, you know. No Maid of Honour had ever written a novel
before. It was quite an event. Dear Prince Albert borrowed a copy of me
one night to read in bed--I have it still, with the page turned down
where he left off.' She hesitated. 'It was only in the second chapter,'
she said at last with a fine truthfulness, 'but you know he was so busy,
all the Queen's work to do, of course, besides his own--poor man!'

Robert implored her to lend him the work, and Mrs. Darcy, with blushes
which made her more weird than ever, consented.

Then there was a pause, filled by an acid altercation between Lady
Charlotte and her husband, who had not found Rose as grateful for his
attentions as, in his opinion, a pink and white nobody at a country
dinner-party ought to be, and was glad of the diversion afforded him by
some aggressive remark of his wife. He and she differed on three main
points--politics; the decoration of their London house, Mr. Wynnstay
being a lover of Louis Quinze, and Lady Charlotte a preacher of Morris;
and the composition of their dinner-parties. Lady Charlotte, in the
pursuit of amusement and notoriety, was fond of flooding the domestic
hearth with all the people possessed of any sort of a name for any sort
of a reason in London. Mr. Wynnstay loathed such promiscuity; and the
company in which his wife compelled him to drink his wine had seriously
soured a small irritable Conservative with more family pride than either
nerves or digestion.

During the whole passage of arms, Mrs. Darcy watched Elsmere,
cat-and-mouse fashion, with a further confidence burning within her, and
as soon as there was once more a general burst of talk, she pounced upon