Viviette laughed again. "But he has already fallen! I don't think he
knows it yet; but he has. It's great fun being a woman, isn't it, dear?"

"I don't know that I've ever found it so," Katherine replied with a
sigh. She was a widow, and had loved her husband, and her sky was still
tinged with grey.

Viviette, quick to catch the sadness in the voice, made no reply, but
renewed the contemplation of her shoe-tips.

"I'm afraid you're an arrant little coquette," said Katherine
indulgently.

"Lord Banstead says I'm a little devil," she laughed.

If she was in some measure a coquette she may be forgiven. What woman
can have suddenly revealed to her the thrilling sense of her sex's
mastery over men without snatching now and then the fearful joy of
using her power? She was one-and-twenty, her heart still unawakened, and
she had returned to her childhood's home to find men who had danced her
on their knees bending low before her, and proclaiming themselves her
humble vassals. It was intoxicating. She had always looked up to Austin
with awe, as one too remote and holy for girlish irreverence. And now!
No wonder her sex laughed within her.

Until she had gone abroad to finish her education, she had lived in that
old, grey manor-house, that dreamed in the sunshine of the terrace below
which she was sitting, ever since they had brought her thither, an
orphaned child of three. Mrs. Ware, her guardian, was her adopted
mother; the sons, Dick and Austin Ware, her brothers--the engagement,