ght
laugh at him. But Sheila did not laugh. She was greatly delighted to
have this talk about the hills and the deer and the wet mornings.
She forgot all about the dinner before her. The servants whipped off
successive plates without her seeing anything of them: they received
random answers about wine, so that she had three full glasses standing
by her untouched. She was no more in Holland Park at that moment than
were the wild animals of which she spoke so proudly and lovingly. If
the great and frail masses of flowers on the table brought her any
perfume at all, it was a scent of peat-smoke. Lord Arthur thought that
his companion was a little too frank and confiding, or rather that she
would have been had she been talking to any one but himself. He rather
liked it. He was pleased to have established friendly relations with
a pretty woman in so short a space; but ought not her husband to give
her a hint about not admitting all and sundry to the enjoyment of
these favors? Perhaps, too, Lord Arthur felt bound to admit to himself
there were some men who more than others inspired confidence in women.
He laid no claims to being a fascinating person, but he had had his
share of success, and considered that Sheila showed discrimination
as well as good-nature in talking so to him. There was, after all,
no necessity for her husband to warn her. She would know how to guard
against admitting all men to a like intimacy. In the mean time he
was very well pleased to be sitting beside this pretty and agreeable
companion, who had an abundant fund of good spirits, and who showed no
sort of conscious embarrassment in thanking you with a bright look
of her eyes or by a smile when you told her something that pleased or
amused her.

But these flattering little speculations were doomed to receive
a sudden check. The juvenile M.P. began to remark that a shade
occasionally crossed the face of his fair companion, and that she
sometimes looked a little anxiously across the table, where Mr.
Lavender and Mrs. Lorraine were seated, half hidden from view by a
heap of silver and flowers in the middle of the board. But though they
could not easily be seen, except at such moments as they turned to
address some neighbor, they could be distinctly enough heard when
there was any lull in the general conversation. And what Sheila heard
did not please her. She began to like that fair, clear-eyed young
woman less. Perhaps her husband meant nothing by the fas