. Well, all these
three--sculpture, painting, and music--give me pleasure, but I should
not want my cow duchess to understand any of them. I should want her
to have numbers of chubby children and to fulfil her social duties,
and never have to go into a rest-cure, or have a longing for
sympathy."

I said a few "yeses" and "reallys" during this long speech, and he
continued, like a mill grinding coffee:

"It don't do to over-breed. You are bound to turn out some _toques_
if not altogether idiotic, and then my sense of beauty is outraged by
the freaks that happen in our shapes--you should see my two sisters,
the plainest women in England. Now you give me joy to look at. You are
quite beautiful, you know. I never saw any one with a nose as straight
and finely cut as yours. Why do you keep putting your parasol so that
I cannot see it?"

"One uses a parasol to keep off the sun, which is hot. Would you wish
me to get a sunstroke to oblige you?" And I put down my parasol still
lower.

"You are selfish!" in an aggrieved voice.

"Of course."

"And not the least ashamed of it!"

"Not the least."

He moved his position deliberately so that he came to my other side,
where the sun was not.

"I learned a certain amount of manoeuvring in South Africa, where I
went for a month or two," he said. "I hope this side of your face will
be as pretty. People always have a better and a worse side."

I laughed. It was too hot to circumvent him again, and his looking at
me could not hurt me.

"This is even prettier," he said, presently. "Where did you hide
yourself, that we none of us ever saw you before you married?"

"I lived rather near here for a little while."

"Now you look sad again. I never watched any one's face so much. Yours
is not like other people's; you look like a cameo, you know."

"Tell me about the people here," I said. "They are all strangers to
me."

"But I would much rather talk about you."

"That does not interest me; you said I was selfish, so you do what I
wish."

"What can I tell you of them? They are like all companies--dull and
amusing, mixed. They are a fair specimen of most people one meets in
the _monde ou l'on s'amuse_. My cousin Lady Grenellen is perhaps the
most interesting among them, as she had the most histories."

"Histories?"

"Yes; her career has been one of riding for a series of falls, and
escaping even a peck."

"She is very lovely."

"Oh yes, Cordelia is good-looking enough,