p of tea, with a thin
slice of lemon in it, and then, dear Mr. Fortescue, please explain my
absurd little puzzle. One can't help believing gentlemen with Roman
noses, even if one meets them in omnibuses."

Mr. Hilbery here interposed so far as Denham was concerned, and talked
a great deal of sense about the solicitors' profession, and the changes
which he had seen in his lifetime. Indeed, Denham properly fell to his
lot, owing to the fact that an article by Denham upon some legal matter,
published by Mr. Hilbery in his Review, had brought them acquainted. But
when a moment later Mrs. Sutton Bailey was announced, he turned to her,
and Mr. Denham found himself sitting silent, rejecting possible things
to say, beside Katharine, who was silent too. Being much about the same
age and both under thirty, they were prohibited from the use of a great
many convenient phrases which launch conversation into smooth waters.
They were further silenced by Katharine's rather malicious determination
not to help this young man, in whose upright and resolute bearing she
detected something hostile to her surroundings, by any of the usual
feminine amenities. They therefore sat silent, Denham controlling his
desire to say something abrupt and explosive, which should shock her
into life. But Mrs. Hilbery was immediately sensitive to any silence
in the drawing-room, as of a dumb note in a sonorous scale, and leaning
across the table she observed, in the curiously tentative detached
manner which always gave her phrases the likeness of butterflies
flaunting from one sunny spot to another, "D'you know, Mr. Denham, you
remind me so much of dear Mr. Ruskin.... Is it his tie, Katharine, or
his hair, or the way he sits in his chair? Do tell me, Mr. Denham, are
you an admirer of Ruskin? Some one, the other day, said to me, 'Oh, no,
we don't read Ruskin, Mrs. Hilbery.' What DO you read, I wonder?--for
you can't spend all your time going up in aeroplanes and burrowing into
the bowels of the earth."

She looked benevolently at Denham, who said nothing articulate, and
then at Katharine, who smiled but said nothing either, upon which Mrs.
Hilbery seemed possessed by a brilliant idea, and exclaimed:

"I'm sure Mr. Denham would like to see our things, Katharine. I'm sure
he's not like that dreadful young man, Mr. Ponting, who told me that he
considered it our duty to live exclusively in the present. After all,
what IS the present? Half of it's the past, and