quality."

"Hasn't that always been the peculiarity of beauty ever since the days
of Helen of Troy?"

"I'm sure I can't say. I've always tried to steer clear of that sort of
thing--"

"That must be an excellent plan; only it deprives one of the power of
speaking as an authority, doesn't it?"

"I don't pretend to speak as an authority. If I say anything at all,
it's what everybody knows."

"What everybody knows is generally--scandal."

"This was certainly scandal; but it wasn't the fact that everybody knew
it that made it so."

"Then I'm sure you wouldn't wish to repeat it."

"I don't see why you should be sure of anything of the kind. I consider
it my duty to repeat it."

"Then you won't be surprised if I consider it mine to contradict it."

"Certainly not. I shouldn't be surprised at anything you could do,
Derek, after what I've heard since I came home."

"I won't ask you what that is--"

"No; your own conscience must tell you. No one can go on as you've been
doing, and not know he must be talked about."

"I've always understood that that was more flattering than to be
ignored."

"It depends. There's such a thing as receiving that sort of flattery
first, only to be ignored in the sequel. I speak as your friend, Derek--"

"I thoroughly understand that; but may I ask if it's in the way of
warning or of threat?"

"It's in the way of both. You must see that, whatever risks I may be
prepared to run myself, as long as I have Marion with me I can't expose
her to--"

"To what?"

Notwithstanding his efforts to keep the conversation to a tone of
banter, acrimonious though it had to be, Derek was unable to pronounce
the two brief syllables without betraying some degree of anger. Glancing
up at him as she shrank under her weight of jewels, Mrs. Bayford found
him very big and menacing; but she was a brave woman, and if she
shrivelled, it was only as a cat shrivels before springing at a mastiff.

"I can't expose her to the chance of meeting--"

She paused, not from hesitation, but with the rhetorical intention of
making the end of her phrase more telling.

"My future wife," he whispered, before she had time to go on. "It's only
fair to tell you that."

"Good heavens! You're not going to marry the creature!"

Mrs. Bayford brought out the words with the dramatic action and
intensity they deserved. In the hum of talk around and across the table
it was doubtful whether or not they were heard, and yet more