‘If he have a favourable passage,’ said Lord Denyer.  ’Favoured by your good wishes the winds and the waves ought to deal gently with him.’

’Ah, we have done with the old days of Greek story, when Neptune was open to feminine influence,’ sighed her ladyship.  ’My poor Ulysses has no goddess of wisdom to look after him.’

’Perhaps not, but he has the most charming of Penelopes waiting for him at home.’

’A Penelope who goes to dinners, and takes life pleasantly in his absence.  That is a new order of things, is it not?’ said her ladyship, laughingly.  ’I hope my poor Ulysses will not come home thoroughly broken in health, but that our Sutherlandshire breezes will set him up again.’

‘Rather an ordeal after India, I should think,’ said Lord Denyer.

‘It is his native air.  He will revel in it.’

‘Delicious country, no doubt,’ assented, his lordship, who was no sportsman, and who detested Scotland, grouse moors, deer forests, salmon rivers included.

His only idea of a winter residence was Florence or Capri, and of the two he preferred Capri.  The island was at that time little frequented by Englishmen.  It had hardly been fashionable since the time of Tiberius, but Lord Denyer went there, accompanied by his French chef, and a dozen other servants, and roughed it in a native hotel; while Lady Denyer wintered at the family seat among the hills near Bath, and gave herself over to Low Church devotion, and works of benevolence.  She made herself a terror to the neighbourhood by the strictness of her ideas all through the autumn and winter; and in the spring she went up to London, put on her turban and her diamonds, and plunged into the vortex of West-End society, where she revolved among other jewelled matrons for the season, telling herself and her intimates that this sacrifice of inclination was due to his lordship’s position.  Lady Denyer was not the less serious-minded because she was seen at every aristocratic resort, and wore low gowns with very short sleeves, and a great display of mottled arm and dimpled elbow.

Now came her ladyship’s smiling signal for the withdrawal of that fairer half of the assembly which was supposed to be indifferent to Lord Denyer’s famous port and Madeira.  She had been throwing out her gracious signals unperceived for at least five minutes before Lady Maulevrier responded, so entirely was that lady absorbed in her conversation with Lord Denyer; but she caught the look at last, and rose, as if moved by the same machinery which impelled her hostess, and then, graceful as a swan sailing with the current, she drifted down the room to the distant door, and headed the stately procession of matronly velvet and diamonds, herself at once the most regal and the most graceful figure in that bevy of fair woman.