“It is purely a matter of concealment,” her friend declared.  “Women are cleverer humbugs than men.”

Borrowdean shrugged his shoulders.

“I know your perfect woman!” he remarked, softly.  “You search for her through the best years of your life, and when you have found her you avoid her.  That,” he added, handing his empty cup to a footman, “is why I am a bachelor.”

The Duchess regarded him complacently.

“My dear Sir Leslie,” she said, “I am afraid you will have to find a better reason for your miserable state.  The perfect woman would certainly have nothing to do with you if you found her.”

“On the contrary,” he declared, confidently, “I am convinced that she would find me attractive.”

The Duchess shook her head.

“Your theory,” she declared, “is antiquated.  Like and unlike do not attract.  We seek in others the qualities which we strive most zealously to develop in ourselves.  I know a case in point.”

“Good!” Sir Leslie remarked.  “I like examples.  The logic of them appeals to me.”

The Duchess half closed her eyes.  For a moment she was silent.  She seemed to be listening to something a long way off.  Through the open windows of her softly shaded drawing-rooms, odourous with flowers, came the rippling of water falling from a fountain in the conservatory, the lazy hum of a mowing machine on the lawn, the distant tinkling of a hansom bell in the Square.  But these were not the sounds which for a moment had changed her face.

“I myself,” she murmured, “am an example!”

A woman who had risen to go sat down again.

“Do go on, Duchess!” she exclaimed.  “Anything in the nature of a personal confession is so fascinating, and you know you are such an enigma to all of us.”

“Am I?” she answered, smiling.  “Then I am likely to remain so.”

“A perfectly obvious person like myself,” the woman remarked, “is always fascinated by the unusual.  But if you are really not going to give yourself away, Duchess, I am afraid I must move on.  One hates to leave your beautifully cool rooms.  Shall I see you to-night, I wonder, at Esholt House?”

“Perhaps!”

There were still many people in the room.  Some fresh arrivals occupied his hostess’s attention, and Borrowdean, with a resigned shrug of the shoulders, prepared to depart.  He had come, hoping for an opportunity to be alone for a few minutes with the Duchess, and himself a skilful tactician in such small matters, he could not but admire the way she had kept him at arm’s length.  And then the opportunity for a master stroke came.  A servant sought him out with a card.  A man of method, he seldom left his rooms without instructions as to where he was to be found.

“The gentleman begged you to excuse his coming here, sir,” the man whispered, confidentially, “but he is returning to the country this evening, and was anxious to see you.  He is quite ready to wait your convenience.”