baffling and
impending, from which--though you might keep them at arm's
length--there was no permanent or actual escape. The question of Miss
St. Quentin's characteristics did not consequently greatly interest
him. He had arrived at conclusions. There was a matter of vital
importance on which he desired to speak to his cousin. But how to do
that? Richard was young and excellently modest. His whole purpose was
rather fiercely focused on speech. But he was diffident, fearing to
approach the subject which he had so much at heart clumsily and in a
tactless, tasteless manner.

"Miss St. Quentin? Oh yes!" he replied, rather absently. "I really know
next to nothing about her. And she seems merely to regard me as a
vehicle of communication between herself and my mother. She sent her
messages just now--I hope to goodness I shan't forget to deliver them!
She and my mother appear to have fallen pretty considerably in love
with one another."

"Probably," Madame de Vallorbes said softly. An agreeable glow of
relief passed over her. She looked up at Richard with a delightful
effect of pensiveness from beneath the sweeping brim of her cavalier
hat.--"I can well believe Aunt Katherine would be attracted by her,"
she continued. "Honoria is quite a woman's woman. Men do not care very
much about her as a rule. There is a good deal of latent vanity
resident in the members of your sex, you know, Richard; and men are
usually conscious that Honoria does not care so very much about them.
They are quite right, she does not. I really believe when poor,
dreadful, old Lady Tobermory left her all that money Honoria's first
thought was that now she might embrace celibacy with a good conscience.
The St. Quentins are not precisely millionaires, you know. Her wealth
left her free to espouse the cause of womanhood at large. She is a
little bit Quixotic, dear thing, and given to tilting at windmills. She
wants to secure to working women a fair business basis--that is the
technical expression, I believe. And so she starts clubs, and forms
circles. She says women must be encouraged to combine and to agitate.
Whether they are capable of combining I do not pretend to say. These
high matters transcend my small wit. But, as I have often pointed out
to her, agitation is the natural attitude of every woman. It would seem
superfluous to encourage or inculcate that, for surely wherever two or
three petticoats are gathered together, there, as far as my experience