“You discovered an exceptional person?”

Lady Henry laughed.

“I was limed, there and then, old bird as I am.  I was first struck with the girl’s appearance—­une belle laide—­with every movement just as it ought to be; infinitely more attractive to me than any pink-and-white beauty.  It turned out that she had just been for a month in Paris with another school-fellow.  Something she said about a new play—­suddenly—­made me look at her.  ’Venez vous asseoir ici, mademoiselle, s’il vous plait—­pres de moi,’ I said to her—­I can hear my own voice now, poor fool, and see her flush up.  Ah!” Lady Henry’s interjection dropped to a note of rage that almost upset Sir Wilfrid’s gravity; but he restrained himself, and she resumed:  “We talked for two hours; it seemed to me ten minutes.  I sent the others out to the gardens.  She stayed with me.  The new French books, the theatre, poems, plays, novels, memoirs, even politics, she could talk of them all; or, rather—­for, mark you, that’s her gift—­she made me talk.  It seemed to me I had not been so brilliant for months.  I was as good, in fact, as I had ever been.  The difficulty in England is to find any one to keep up the ball.  She does it to perfection.  She never throws to win—­never!—­but so as to leave you all the chances.  You make a brilliant stroke; she applauds, and in a moment she has arranged you another.  Oh, it is the most extraordinary gift of conversation—­and she never says a thing that you want to remember.”

There was a silence.  Lady Henry’s old fingers drummed restlessly on the table.  Her memory seemed to be wandering angrily among her first experiences of the lady they were discussing.

“Well,” said Sir Wilfrid, at last, “so you engaged her as lectrice, and thought yourself very lucky?”

“Oh, don’t suppose that I was quite an idiot.  I made some inquiries—­I bored myself to death with civilities to the stupid family she was staying with, and presently I made her stay with me.  And of course I soon saw there was a history.  She possessed jewels, laces, little personal belongings of various kinds, that wanted explaining.  So I laid traps for her; I let her also perceive whither my own plans were drifting.  She did not wait to let me force her hand.  She made up her mind.  One day I found, left carelessly on the drawing-room table, a volume of Saint-Simon, beautifully bound in old French morocco, with something thrust between the leaves.  I opened it.  On the fly-leaf was written the name Marriott Dalrymple, and the leaves opened, a little farther, on a miniature of Lady Rose Delaney.  So—­”

“Apparently it was her traps that worked,” said Sir Wilfrid, smiling.  Lady Henry returned the smile unwillingly, as one loath to acknowledge her own folly.

“I don’t know that I was trapped.  We both desired to come to close quarters.  Anyway, she soon showed me books, letters—­from Lady Rose, from Dalrymple, Lord Lackington—­the evidence was complete....