Miss L’Estrange kept her word, saying but little to those who would fain have engrossed her whole attention—­that was given, to Lord Arleigh.  She watched his face keenly throughout the performance.  He did not evince any great interest in it.

“You do not care for ‘La Grande Duchesse?’” she said.

“No—­frankly, I do not,” he replied.

“Tell me why,” said Philippa.

“Can you ask me to do so, Philippa?” he returned, surprised; and then he added, “I will tell you.  First of all, despite the taking music, it is a performance to which I should not care to bring my wife and sister.”

“Tell me why?” she said, again.

“It lowers my idea of womanhood.  I could not forgive the woman, let her be duchess or peasant, who could show any man such great love, who could lay herself out so deliberately to win a man.”

She looked at him gravely.  He continued: 

“Beauty is very charming, I grant—­as are grace and talent; but the chief charm to me of a woman is her modesty.  Do you not agree with me, Philippa?”

“Yes,” she replied, “most certainly I do; but, Norman, you are hard upon us.  Suppose that, woman loves a man ever so truly—­she must not make any sign?”

“Any sign she might make would most certainly, in my opinion, lessen her greatest charm,” he said.

“But,” she persisted, “do you not think that is rather hard?  Why must a woman never evince a preference for the man she loves?”

“Woman should be wooed—­never be wooer,” said Lord Arleigh.

“Again I say you are hard, Norman.  According to you, a woman is to break her heart in silence and sorrow for a man, rather than give him the least idea that she cares for him.”

“I should say there is a happy medium between the Duchess of Gerolstein and a broken heart.  Neither men nor women can help their peculiar disposition, but in my opinion a man never more esteems a woman than when he sees she wants to win his love.”

He spoke with such perfect freedom from all consciousness that she knew the words could not be intended for her; nevertheless she had learned a lesson from them.

“I am like yourself, Norman,” she said; “I do not care for the play at all; we will go home,” and they left the house before the Grand Duchess had played her part.

Chapter IX.

Philippa L’Estrange thought long and earnestly over her last conversation with Lord Arleigh.  She had always loved him; but the chances are that, if he had been devoted to her on his return, if he had wooed her as others did, she would have been less empressee.  As it was, he was the only man she had not conquered, the only one who resisted her, on whom her fascinations fell without producing a magical effect.  She could not say she had conquered her world while he was unsubdued.  Yet how was it?  She asked herself that question a hundred