he Regent would have worshiped. When she had no one better to corrupt,
I have seen her take in hand an older, sadder, wiser, uglier man than
myself, and in three days bring him to the verge of insanity, so that he
would scowl at his wife, his companion for forty years, the blameless
mother of six grown-up children, with a hideous expression indicative of
carving-knives and strychnine. Guy suits her best. His thews and sinews
awe her a little sometimes; and he has a certain hardness of character
and pitilessness of purpose, improved by my instructions, which will
carry him far, but not far enough, I think. You're right not to look
flattered" (Guy's face had moved no more than the marble Memnon's); "you
are only a shade better than the rest. Our effete world is not worthy of
that rare creature: she was born a century too late."

"I quite differ with you," Bruce said, in his harshest voice; "I am
certain the great plurality of the women of our day would resist any
temptation, from fear of the consequences, if not from principle."

Fancy the feelings of the Greek professor interrupted in his lecture by
a controverting freshman, and you will have some idea of Fallowfield's.
His eye lighted on the last speaker, glittering like a hooded snake's,
as it were caressing him with a lambent scorn.

I never guessed how much sneering provocation could reside in tones
usually so very soft and musical till I heard him answer, "I suppose you
_do_ differ with me. We probably both speak from experience. On one
point you are scarcely practical, though. You think you can frighten a
woman into propriety. Try it."

"Are you not too general in your strictures or encomiums?" I suggested,
wishing to relieve the awkwardness which ensued; "surely there are many
instances to the contrary. Take Lady Clanronald, for instance, married
to a man her elder by twenty years, and not very clever or agreeable, I
should think. No one ever breathed a whisper against her, and it has not
been through default of aspirants."

An evil smile curled round the old _roue's_ sensual mouth, radiating
even to the verge of the forest of his iron-gray whiskers.

"Clanronald not clever?" he replied. "The cleverest man I know. He knew
how his wife would be tempted, and he has taken the greatest pains to
encourage a counteracting influence--family pride. Don't you know she is
a Hautagne? It is a tradition with that race that their women never go
wrong--under a prince of th