as a lion who
roamed at large over a great variety of hunting grounds, some of which it
would be snobbish to mention; for many reasons he preferred Quicksands: a
man-eater, a woman-eater, and extraordinarily popular, nevertheless. Many
ladies, so it was reported, had tried to tame him: some of them he had
cheerfully gobbled up, and others after the briefest of inspections,
disdainfully thrust aside with his paw.

This instinct for lion taming, which the most spirited of women possess,
is, by the way, almost inexplicable to the great majority of the male
sex. Honora had it, as must have been guessed. But however our faith in
her may be justified by the ridiculous ease of her previous conquests, we
cannot regard without trepidation her entrance into the arena with this
particular and widely renowned king of beasts. Innocence pitted against
sophistry and wile and might.

Two of the preliminary contests we have already witnessed. Others, more
or less similar, followed during a period of two months or more. Nothing
inducing the excessive wagging of tongues,--Honora saw to that, although
Mrs. Chandos kindly took the trouble to warn our heroine,--a scene for
which there is unfortunately no space in this chronicle; an entirely
amicable, almost honeyed scene, in Honora's boudoir. Nor can a complete
picture of life at Quicksands be undertaken. Multiply Mrs. Dallam's
dinner-party by one hundred, Howard Silence's Sundays at the Club by
twenty, and one has a very fair idea of it. It was not precisely
intellectual. "Happy," says Montesquieu, "the people whose annals are
blank in history's book." Let us leave it at that.

Late one afternoon in August Honora was riding homeward along the ocean
road. The fragrant marshes that bordered it were a vivid green under the
slanting rays of the sun, and she was gazing across them at the breakers
crashing on the beach beyond. Trixton Brent was beside her.

"I wish you wouldn't stare at me so," she said, turning to him suddenly;
"it is embarrassing."

"How did you know I was looking at you?" he asked.

"I felt it."

He drew his horse a little nearer.

"Sometimes you're positively uncanny," she added.

He laughed.

"I rather like that castles-in-Spain expression you wore," he declared.

"Castles in Spain?"

"Or in some other place where the real estate is more valuable. Certainly
not in Quicksands."

"You are uncanny," proclaimed Honora, with conviction.

"I told you you wouldn't