constitution is established on a mere equipoise, with dark
precipices and deep waters all around it.' So said Burke," replies
Brandolin. "At the present moment everybody has forgotten the delicacy
of this nice equipoise, and one day or other it will lose its balance
and topple over into the deep waters, and be engulfed. Myself, I confess
I do not think that time is very distant."

"I hope it is; I am very much attached to England," replies the Princess
Xenia, gravely, "and to naughty English boys," she adds, passing her
hand over the shining locks of the Babe.

"She must be in love with an Englishman," thinks Brandolin, with the
one-sided construction which a man is always ready to place on the words
of a woman. "Must we go in-doors?" he asks, regretfully, as she is
moving towards the house. "It is so pleasant in these quaint green
arbors. To be under a roof on such a summer afternoon as this, is to fly
in the face of a merciful Creator with greater ingratitude than Usk's
ingratitude to Inigo Jones."

"But I have scarcely seen my hostess," says Madame Sabaroff;
nevertheless, she resigns herself to a seat in a yew-tree cut like a
helmet.

There are all manner of delightful old-fashioned flowers, such flowers
as Disraeli gave to the garden of Corisande, growing near in groups
encircled by clipped box-edging.

Those disciples of Pallas Athene who render the happy lives of the
Surrenden children occasionally a burden to them seize at that moment on
their prey and bear them off to the school-room. The Babe goes to his
doom sullenly; he would be tearful, only that were too unmanly.

"Why do you let those innocents be tortured, George?" asks Brandolin.

"Books should, like business, entertain the day,"

replies Usk: "so you said, at least, just now. Their governesses are of
the same opinion."

"That is not the way to make them love books, to shut them up against
their wills on a summer afternoon."

"How will you educate your children when you have 'em, then?"

"He always gets out of any impersonal argument by putting some personal
question," complains Brandolin to Madame Sabaroff. "It is a common
device, but always an unworthy one. Because a system is very bad, it
does not follow that I alone of all men must be prepared with a better
one. I think if I had children I would not have them taught in that way
at all. I should get the wisest old man I could find, a Samuel Johnson
touched with a John Ruskin, and shou