at married?" They
all do! You don't believe me? Just wait! Freddy shall take you over,
and----' Was Mrs. Freddy beaming at the prospective success of her new
friend, or was her vanity flattered by reflecting upon her own
perspicacity? Unavoidable as it was in a way that Mrs. Graham Townley
should be taken down to dinner by the new minister--nevertheless the
antidote had been cleverly provided for. 'Freddy dear--why, I thought he
was---- Oh, there he is!' Seeing her hungry husband safely anchored in
front of the iris gown, instantly she abandoned the idea of disturbing
him. 'After all,' she said, turning again to Haycroft, who had stood the
image of stolid unimpressionableness--'after all, Freddy's right. Since
she's going to sit beside you at dinner, it's a good reason for not
making you known to each other before. Or perhaps you never experience
that awful feeling of being talked out by the time you go down, and not
having a single thing left----' She saw that the great man was not going
to vouchsafe any contribution to her small attempt to keep the ball
rolling; so without giving him the chance to mark her failure by a
silence, however brief, she chattered on. 'Though with Vida you're not
likely to find yourself in that predicament. Is he, Ronald?' With the
instinct of the well-trained female to draw into her circle any odd man
hovering about on the periphery, Mrs. Freddy appealed to her
brother-in-law. Lord Borrodaile turned in her direction his long sallow
face--a face that would have been saturnine but for its touch of
whimsicality and a singularly charming smile. 'My brother-in-law will
bear me out,' Mrs. Freddy went on, quite as though breaking off a
heated argument.

Lord Borrodaile sauntered up and offered a long thin hand to Haycroft
('the fella who's bringing the country to the dogs,' as Mrs. Freddy knew
right well was his conviction).

Steering wide of politics, 'I gather,' he said, with his air of amiable
boredom, 'that you were discussing what used in the days of my youth to
be called a lady's "conversational powers."'

'I forbid you to apply such deadly phrases to my friend,' Mrs. Freddy
denounced him. '_Your_ friend, too!'

'I'll prove my title to the distinction by proclaiming that she has the
subtlest art a woman can possess.'

'Ah, _that's_ more like it!' said Mrs. Freddy, gaily. 'What is the
subtlest art?'

'The art of being silent without being dull.'

If there was any sting in this for the