truth,
small respect. They appeared to her so absurdly inadequate, so
contemptibly divorced from the primary interests of existence. More
than once, in a spirit of mischievous malice, she was tempted to bid
the good ladies lay aside their Baedekers and Murrays, and increase
their knowledge of the Italian character and language by study of the
_Novelle_ of Bandello, or of certain merry tales to be found in the
pages of the _Decameron_. She had copies of both works in her
traveling-bag. She was prepared, moreover, to illustrate such ancient
saws by modern instances, for the truth of which last she could quite
honestly vouch. But on second thoughts she spared her victims. The
quarry was not worth the chase. What self-respecting panther can, after
all, go a-hunting in a hen-roost? So from the neighbourhood of their
unlovely clothes, questioning glances, and under-vitalised pursuit of
art and literature, she removed herself to her sitting-room up-stairs.
Charles should serve her meals there in future, for to sit at table
with these neuters, clothed in amorphous garments, came near upsetting
her digestion.

Meanwhile, as she watched the rain streaming down the panes of the big
windows, watched thin-legged, heavily-cloaked figures tacking,
wind-buffeted, across the gray-black street into the shelter of some
cavernous _port cochere_, it must be owned her spirits went very
sensibly down into her boots. Even the presence of the despised and
repudiated Destournelle would have been grateful to her. Remembrance of
all the less successful episodes of her career assaulted her. And in
that connection, of necessity, the thought of Brockhurst returned upon
her. For neither the affair of her childhood--that of the little dancer
with blush-roses in her hat--or the other affair--of now nearly four
years back--the intimate drama frustrated, within sight of its climax,
by intervention of Lady Calmady--could be counted otherwise than as
failures. It was strange how deep-seated was her discontent under this
head. As on Queen Mary's heart the word Calais, so on hers Brockhurst,
she sometimes thought, might be found written when she was dead. In the
last four years Richard had given her princely gifts. He had treated
her with a fine, old-world chivalry, as something sacred and apart. But
he rarely sought her society. He seemed, rather carefully, to elude her
pursuit. His name was not exactly a patent of discretion and rectitude
in these days, u