't, because he is a nice man and you are a nice
woman. Oh, Jeannie, don't you hate those creatures who keep a man
dangling--wives, I mean--who like knowing that a man is eating his poor
silly heart out for them, who don't intend to lead--well, double lives,
and yet keep him tied to their apron-strings? Such vampires! They put
their dreadful noses in the air the moment he says something to them
that he shouldn't, and all the time they have been encouraging him to
say it! They are flirts, who will certainly find themselves in a very
uncomfortable round of the Inferno! I should torture them if I were
Providence! I am sure Providence would prefer---- Dear me, yes."

Alice kissed her again.

"Isn't it so?" she demanded, vehemently.

"About flirts? Why, of course. A flirt is a woman who leads a man on and
leads him on, and then suddenly says, 'What do you mean?' Surely we need
not discuss them."

Lady Nottingham went over to the window-seat.

"No, I know we need not," she said. "I was led away. Darling, Victor
Braithwaite is coming to Bray on Saturday. Did you ever hear of
anything more apt? Till this moment I was not sure that you would ever
marry him, though I longed for you to do so. You shall have a punt all
to yourselves--a private particular punt--and he shall--well, he shall
punt you about. Oh, Jeannie, I too love the youth of the world."

Jeannie drew her chair a little nearer to the window-seat, in which Lady
Nottingham had taken her place after the catastrophe of the hot water.

"I know. He told me he was coming to Bray to-day."

"Oh, he met you at Victoria?" she asked.

"No, dear; a little further down the line--at Dover, in fact. Yes,
Alice, his was the first face I saw as we came alongside. And how my
heart went out to him! What a good homecoming it has been, and how
absolutely unworthy I feel of it! You have no idea how I used to rebel
and complain in--in those past years, wondering what I had done to have
my life so spoilt. Spoilt! Yes, that was the word I used to myself, and
all the time this was coming nearer."

"Tell me more, dear."

"About him?" asked Jeannie.

"About him and you."

"Well, all the autumn I was on the Italian lakes. Oh, Alice, such
dreadful months, and all the more dreadful because of the maddening
beauty of the place. I looked at it. I knew it was all there, but I
never saw it; it never went inside me, or went to make part of me. I
was very sleepless all that time, and depre