Whitmonby, musing that some distraction of an earnest incentive spoilt Mrs. Warwick’s wit, informed him:  ’The two different species then break their shallow armistice and join the shock of battle for possession of the earth, and we are outnumbered and exterminated, to a certainty.  So I am against independence.’

‘Socially a Mussulman, subject to explosions!’ Diana said.  ’So the eternal duel between us is maintained, and men will protest that they are for civilization.  Dear me, I should like to write a sketch of the women of the future—­don’t be afraid!—­the far future.  What a different earth you will see!’

And very different creatures! the gentlemen unanimously surmised.  Westlake described the fairer portion, no longer the weaker; frightful hosts.

Diana promised him a sweeter picture, if ever she brought her hand to paint it.

’You would be offered up to the English national hangman, Jehoiachim Sneer,’ interposed Arthur Rhodes, evidently firing a gun too big for him, of premeditated charging, as his patroness perceived; but she knew him to be smarting under recent applications of the swish of Mr. Sneer, and that he rushed to support her.  She covered him by saying:  ’If he has to be encountered, he kills none but the cripple,’ wherewith the dead pause ensuing from a dose of outlandish speech in good company was bridged, though the youth heard Westlake mutter unpleasantly:  ‘Jehoiachim,’ and had to endure a stare of Dacier’s, who did not conceal his want of comprehension of the place he occupied in Mrs. Warwick’s gatherings.

‘They know nothing of us whatever!’ Lady Pennon harped on her dictum.

‘They put us in a case and profoundly study the captive creature,’ said Diana:  ‘but would any man understand this . . . ?’ She dropped her voice and drew in the heads of Lady Pennon, Lady Singleby, Lady Esquart and Miss Courtney:  ’Real woman’s nature speaks.  A maid of mine had a “follower.”  She was a good girl; I was anxious about her and asked her if she could trust him.  “Oh, yes, ma’am,” she replied, “I can; he’s quite like a female.”  I longed to see the young man, to tell him he had received the highest of eulogies.’

The ladies appreciatingly declared that such a tale was beyond the understandings of men.  Miss Paynham primmed her mouth, admitting to herself her inability to repeat such a tale; an act that she deemed not ‘quite like a lady.’  She had previously come to the conclusion that Mrs. Warwick, with all her generous qualities, was deficient in delicate sentiment—­owing perhaps to her coldness of temperament.  Like Dacier also, she failed to comprehend the patronage of Mr. Rhodes:  it led to suppositions; indefinite truly, and not calumnious at all; but a young poet, rather good-looking and well built, is not the same kind of wing-chick as a young actress, like Miss Courtney—­Mrs. Warwick’s latest shieldling:  he is hardly enrolled for the reason that was assumed to sanction