But can you
tell me, Temple, why we came here? There was no earthly reason to quit a
place that suited us perfectly because Lady Augusta Bramleigh wished to
do us an impertinence."

"Oh, but we ought to have been here six weeks ago. They are frantic at
'the Office' at our delay, and there will be a precious to-do about it
in the House."

"Culduff likes that. If he has moments that resemble happiness they are
those when he is so palpably in the wrong that they would ruin any other
man than himself."

"Well, he has got one of them now, I can tell you."

"Oh, I am aware of what you diplomatic people call great emergencies,
critical conjunctures, and the like; but as Lord Watermore said the
other evening, 'all your falls are like those in the circus--you always
come down upon sawdust.'"

"There's precious little sawdust here. It's a case will make a
tremendous noise in England. When a British subject has been ironed
and--"

"Am I late? I shall be in despair, my Lady, if I have kept you
waiting," said Lord Culduff, entering in all the glory of red ribbon and
Guelph, and with an unusually brilliant glow of youth and health in his
features.

It was with a finished gallantry that he offered his arm; and his smile,
as he led her to the dinner-room, was triumph itself. What a contrast
to the moody discontent on _her_ face; for she did not even affect to
listen to his excuses, or bestow the slightest attention on his little
flatteries and compliments. During the dinner Lord Culduff alone spoke.
He was agreeable after his manner, which was certainly a very finished
manner; and he gave little reminiscences of the last time he had been
at Naples, and the people he had met, sketching their eccentricities and
oddities most amusingly, for he was a master in those light touches of
satire which deal with the ways of society, and, perhaps, to any one but
his wife he would have been most entertaining and pleasant. She never
deigned the very faintest recognition of what he said. She neither
smiled when he was witty, nor looked shocked at his levities. Only once,
when, by a direct appeal to her, silence was impossible, she said, with
a marked spitefulness, "You are talking of something very long ago. I
think I heard of that when I was a child." There was a glow under his
Lordship's rouge as he raised his glass to his lips, and an almost
tremor in his voice when he spoke again.

"I 'm afraid you don't like Naples, my Lady?"

"I de