"There can be no better authority on the subject," said Lord Arleigh,
laughingly, "than myself."

"You; I admit that. Well, as the ice is broken, Lord Arleigh, and we are
old friends, I may ask, why do you not marry?"

"Simply because of marriage, and of love that ends in marriage, I have
not thought," he answered lightly.

"It is time for you to begin," observed the duchess; "my own impression
is that a man does no good in the world until he is married." And then
she added: "I suppose you have an ideal of womanhood?"

Lord Arleigh's face flushed.

"Yes," he acknowledged, "I have an ideal of my own, derived from poetry
I have read, from pictures I have seen--an ideal of perfect grace,
loveliness, and purity. When I meet that ideal, I shall meet my fate."

"Then you have never yet seen the woman you would like to to marry?"
pursued the duchess.

"No," he answered, quite seriously; "strange to say, although I have
seen some of the fairest and noblest types of womanhood, I have not yet
met with my ideal."

They were disturbed by a sudden movement--the flowers that Philippa held
in her hand had fallen to the ground.