lies with me and mine--with me
chiefly...."

"All nonsense, my lord! Excuse my contradicting you flatly. Your
instruction, not expressed but implied, to old Stephen, was clearly
_not_ to miss his mark. If he had killed Achilles you _would_ have been
responsible, as Apollo was responsible for the arrow of Paris.... Yes,
my dear, we were talking about you." This was to the collie, who woke up
from deep sleep at the sound of his name, and felt he could mix with a
society that recognised him. But not without shaking himself violently
and scratching his head, until appealed to to stop.

The Earl let further protest stand over, and said good-night, rather
relieved at the beneficial effect of the good creature's ministrations.
The excellent woman herself, when the grog was disposed of, facilitated
her charge's dispositions for the night, and retired to rest with an
ill-digested idea that she had interrupted a conversation about the
corrupt gaieties of a vicious foreign capital, inhabited chiefly by
atheists and idolaters.

* * * * *

The Countess's long talk with her husband, wedged in between an early
abdication of the drawing-room and the sound of Gwen laughing
audaciously with Miss Torrens on the staircase, and more temperate
good-nights below, had tended towards a form of party government in
which the Earl was the Liberal and her ladyship the Conservative party.
The Bill before the House was never exactly read aloud, its contents
being taken for granted. When the Countess had said, in their previous
interview, first that it was Gwen, and then that it was this young
Torrens, she had really exhausted the subject.

Nevertheless she seemed now to claim for herself credit for a clear
exposition of the contents of this Bill, in spite of constant
interruptions from a factious Opposition. "I hope," she said, "that, now
that I have succeeded in making you understand, you will speak to Gwen
yourself. I suppose she's not going to stop downstairs all night."

The Earl also supposed not. But even in that very improbable event the
resources of human ingenuity would not be exhausted. He could, for
instance, go downstairs to speak to her. But other considerations
intervened. Was her ladyship's information unimpeachable? Was it
absolutely impossible that she should have been misled in any
particular? Could he, in fact, consider his information official?

The Countess showed unexampled forbearance und