lement of an organised attack in the behaviour of the young nobleman,
upright and above-board as it had been; hence his hurrying of his
inestimable treasure,--the one creature that could give him
peace,--along the road to Headlinge that evening; hence too the tactics
he had resolved to adopt. For he felt instinctively, not only that Lord
Henry was moving against him, but also that Mrs. Delarayne was fast
becoming an open enemy.

They entwined fingers discreetly as they walked along, and the moment
they had plunged into the grove, he would raise her hand from time to
time, as he spoke, and kiss it fervently. It was cool and firm, a
beautiful symbol of her beautiful body, and he was racked with a
wildness of longing by the side of which the language of Cupid sounds
like the pipe of a bird in a hurricane.

It seemed to his resourceful mind that possibly the best way of securing
this girl's attachment to him, would be by a vivid appeal to her senses.
His prestige was at stake, and in this dilemma men have been known to go
to even greater lengths than when driven by sensuality alone. He did not
underestimate the vigour of her passions, and knew that in this
direction there was hope of uncontested victory.

"How heavenly it is," he said, "to have you quite alone for once, with
nothing but wild nature looking on! How I loathe that crowd when it
keeps us apart even for a moment."

He halted for a second, and they kissed.

"Oh, Leo, my darling," he continued, as they again walked slowly towards
Headlinge, "you don't know how I suffer to see you in your present
environment. You who are so natural, so essentially a creature of the
wilds, surrounded by things that are so artificial, so overheated, so
stagey. I shudder every time I hear you call the Warrior 'Peachy.' It
shows how grossly your true nature has been distorted to serve her
artificial ends. The beautiful word 'mother' would give the lie to the
deception she tries to practice daily upon all of us, with every means
that her art can supply. Excuse my speaking like this of your mother;
but I imagine you a wild creature of the woods, with flowing hair; your
mother a natural parent, who resigns herself cheerfully and becomingly
to age, whose face is coloured uniquely by the sun, despising as much as
you yourself surely do those petty tricks of make-believe,--those
cosmetics and hair-dyes, that don't even deceive the coarsest chauffeur
on the road,--and realising the charm