So you do not believe in
marriage," he said at length.

"I would not say that, my lord; but I do not think it suitable for a
man of temperament such as myself. I have known marriages quite
successful where too much was not required of the contracting parties."

"But don't you believe in love?" enquired Bowen.

"Love, my lord, is like a disease. If you are on the look out for it
you catch it, if you ignore it, it does not trouble you. I was once
with a gentleman who was very nervous about microbes. He would never
eat anything that had not been cooked, and he had everything about him
disinfected. He even disinfected me," he added as if in proof of the
extreme eccentricity of his late employer.

"So I suppose you despise me for having fallen in love and
contemplating marriage," said Bowen with a smile.

"There are always exceptions, my lord," responded Peel tactfully. "I
have prepared the bath."

"Peel," remarked Bowen as he rose and stretched himself, "disinfected
or not disinfected, you are safe from the microbe of romance."

"I hope so, my lord," responded Peel as he opened the door.

"I wonder if history will repeat itself," murmured Bowen as he walked
through his bedroom into the bathroom. "I, too, hate Eastbourne."

CHAPTER XX

A RACE WITH SPINSTERHOOD

Before she had been at Eastbourne twenty-four hours Patricia was
convinced that she had made a mistake in going there. With no claims
upon her time, the restlessness that had developed in London increased
until it became almost unbearable. The hotel at which she was staying
was little more than a glorified boarding-house, full of "the most
jungly of jungle-people," as she expressed it to herself. Their
well-meant and kindly efforts to engage her in their pursuits and
pleasures she received with apathetic negation. At length her
fellow-guests, seeing that she was determined not to respond to their
overtures, left her severely alone. The men were the last to desist.

She came to dislike the pleasure-seekers about her and grew critical of
everything she saw, the redness of the women's faces, the assumed
youthfulness of the elderly men, the shapelessness of matrons who
seemed to delight in bright open-work blouses and juvenile hats. She
remembered Elton's remark that Fashion uncovers a multitude of shins.
The shins exposed at Eastbourne were she decided, sufficient to
undermine one's belief in the early chapters of Genesis.

At one time