Judge raised his brows. "I know who you mean, but we've never met. There has been some correspondence between us. He was making the trip to England, and wished to visit my place. It seems hos wife's people at one time owned the estate."

"So he told us. It was actually in your house that we met him."

"Thumping your piano, incidentally," added Marshall.

Judge shot him a glance of inquiry.

"Hammering out Mendelssohn," explained the underwriter.

"It was one of Bethoven's Symphonies, to be exact," corrected Isbel, with a smile. "The Seventh. Are you musical, Mr. Judge?"

"Not very, I fear. You, of course, are?"

"But why 'of course'? Am I so transparent a person?"

Roger tossed off a full glass of Sauterne. "Some women have accomplishments. Billy is one of the latter sort."

"Honey with a sting in it, Roger. Those of us who have no brains you are kind enough to console with fascination. But perhaps I have neither."

"Or perhaps both," suggested Judge, gallantly. "I for one, see no reason why they should not go together. Many of the cleverest women in history have been the most fascinating."

"But history has been written by men, and men aren't the most enlightened critics where women are concerned. All that will have to be re-written by qualified feminine experts some day."

Judge laughed. "But, in point of fact, men happen to be the best critics of feminine human nature. A woman's natural impulse is to look for faults in her sisters; a man's first thought is to look for noble qualities."

"It may be very chivalrous, but I don't call it criticism," rejoined Isbel quickly. "You're not in the least likely ever to understand a woman's character that way."

"If faults constitute a character-no. But my contention is that it's this constant dwelling on faults which obscures our view of a woman's real underlying nature. In this sense men are the best observers of your sex."

"Let me translate," put in Roger. "It's good policy to credit a woman with virtues, for if she hasn't got them already, she will have as soon as she clearly understands that other people believe that she has. Does that go?"

His wife answered: "If you praise a woman's frock, she will probably like to go on wearing it. Why should it be different with a virtue? Because you haven't worn a thing for a long while, it doesn't follow, when you do wear it, that it isn't your own rightful property."

"Then there are no counterfeit qualities?" demanded Isbel.

"None which cannot be easily detected," said Judge. "To extend Mrs. Stokes' comparison: a borrowed or stolen garment can in most cases be discovered to be so by the misfit. In life, it isn't difficult to distinguish between true and false."

"Does that apply to everything-every quality?"

"Undoubtedly, in my opinion."

"To the relation between men and women?"

"Certainly. Genuine love-for I take it you mean that-would be the most difficult thing in the world to simulate."

"Really?"

"Almost an impossibility, if only men and women were not so anxious to be deceived."

"Yet coquettes have existed, and still exist."

Judge lifted his glass with a hand steady as a rock, and examined its contents against the light meditatively.

"Don't misunderstand me, Miss Loment. I don't assert that an infatuated man couldn't be hoodwinked by a clever woman, if she made it her business. All I say is, if he is dubious about her good faith, tests exist."

"What tests?"

"A coquette, for instance, would know how to flatter his vanity and use her eyes to the best effect, but it's extremely unlikely that she would consent to throw overboard all other society for his. That would be one test…And then there's the question of sacrifice. Is she, not only ready, but eager, to sacrifice her own happiness for his, not in one way or on one occasion, but in all their relations and at all times?…"

"Most excellent tests!" said Roger, with twinkling eyes. "If fulfilled satisfactorily, the fair lady in question might be safely set down as mortally wounded, and our friend could go full steam ahead with every assurance of eventually leading her to the alter."

Blanche leant her beautiful arm on the table and propped her face with her fingers.

"But do you insist, Mr. Judge, that every romance is imperfect which doesn't' exhibit these extreme symptoms on both sides?"

"As a matter of fact, I wasn't thinking of romance, in the common acceptance of the term, Mrs. 'stokes. There are deep, and possibly painful, transactions of the heart to which the term 'romance' would be quite inadequate."

There was a general silence, while the waiter removed the course. The subject was not resumed across the table, but Isbel followed it up with Judge, in a low voice.

"You seem to speak from experience, Mr. Judge?"

"A man of my age must possess a large accumulation of experience, Miss Loment, but it needn't necessarily be personal experience."

"In that case you are to be congratulated, for it can't be a happy condition-this deep passion you have just described."

He toyed with the stem of his empty glass. "Only certain natures have a capacity for it, perhaps, and they perhaps have an inward tormenting craving for it. It's very difficult to lay down a law as to what is good, and what is not good."

"And I think women must have it more than me."

He glanced at her swiftly. "As the self-sacrificing sex, you mean?"

"No, I don't mean that. I mean, as the sex which worships the heart, and believes it higher than the highest morality."

"That's true."

"And the worst of it is," went on Isbel, speaking still lower, "no woman can feel really safe until she has experienced this feeling you speak of." She uttered a nervous laugh. "Someone else may turn up, who will prove to her how mistakenly she has been living…But, of course, I know nothing about it. girls get all sorts of queer fancies in their heads, and that's because they don't live in the real world."

"The wisest course is not to think about such things. By a useful provision of nature, passion comes to comparatively few, and there's no reason for anyone to suppose that he or she is one of the tragic band. The chances are infinitely against it."

"Yes, of course-that's the only sensible way to think…I hope you're not offended by my breach of decorum in discussing such matters?"

"How could I be?"

"Then don't let's say any more. My aunt's watching us…Apropos, have you spoken to her about Runhill yet?"

"I've had no real opportunity up to the present."

"Is it really necessary to this evening?"

"Possibly not, if it could be avoided."

"Will you leave it to me?"

"Willingly; but if she questions me, I must answer her."

"Of course, but don't be precipitate." A quick smile. "I don't want to return to town yet."

"You find Brighton attractive?"

"It has attractions."

Judge's cream-ice stood in front of him untouched.

"The place itself, or the connections you have formed here?"

"The place itself is horrid."

Meanwhile Blanche had been exchanging words with Marshall.

"I want to get Mr. Judge to show us over his house-myself and Roger, I mean. What's the best way to go to work?"

She did not explain that the idea was Isbel's, and she herself only the friendly medium.

"Ask him, of course," said Marshall. "He's quite an obliging old sort."

"You go back on Monday, don't you?"

"Yes. Why?"

"I thought we might fix Monday. You wouldn't want to see the place again, would you?"

"I want Billy to come with us, though. I expect you wouldn't take it in bad part for once-running off like that without you, I mean?"

"Lord, no!-why should I? Very glad if you can make a decent day of it. I'd take lunch and make it a picnic, if I were you."