ugust. Will you
come then?"

"The house is ready for you?"

"It will be. The necessary repairs will be begun now. I have bought it
furnished."

"The lovers' furniture?"

"Yes. I shall add a number of my own things, picked up on my
wanderings."

"I'll come in August if you'll have me. But I'll give you the season to
think whether you'll have me or whether you won't. I'm a horrible
bore in a house--the lazy man who does nothing and knows a lot. Casa
Felice--Casa Felice. You won't alter the name?"

"Would you advise me to?"

"I don't know. To keep it is to tempt the wrath of the gods, but I
should keep it."

He poured out another whisky-and-soda and suddenly began to curse Miss
Schley.

Sir Donald had spoken to her after Mrs. Wolfstein's lunch.

"She's imitating Lady Holme," said Carey.

"I cannot see the likeness," Sir Donald said. "Miss Schley seems to me
uninteresting and common."

"She is."

"And Lady Holme's personality is, on the contrary; interesting and
uncommon."

"Of course. Pimpernel Schley would be an outrage in that Campo Santo of
yours. And yet there is a likeness, and she's accentuating it every day
she lives."

"Why?"

"Ask the women why they do the cursed things they do do."

"You are a woman-hater?"

"Not I. Didn't I say just now that Casa Felice wanted a woman? But the
devil generally dwells where the angel dwells--cloud and moon together.
Now you want to get on with that poem."

Half London was smiling gently at the resemblance between Lady Holme
and Miss Schley before the former made up her mind to ask the latter
to "something." And when, moved to action by certain evidences of the
Philadelphia talent which could not be misunderstood, she did make up
her mind, she resolved that the "something" should be very large and by
no means very intimate. Safety wanders in crowds.

She sent out cards for a reception, one of those affairs that begin
about eleven, are tremendous at half past, look thin at twelve, and have
faded away long before the clock strikes one.

Lord Holme hated them. On several occasions he had been known to throw
etiquette to the winds and not to turn up when his wife was giving them.
He always made what he considered to be a good excuse. Generally he had
"gone into the country to look at a horse." As Lady Holme sent out her
cards, and saw her secretary writing the words, "Miss Pimpernel Schley,"
on an envelope which contained one, she asked herself whether he