"Oh, she's not so bad," said the Englishman, loyally. "She has
some admirable traits, and she's deuced clever, but she has an
ill-regulated sort of a nature, and is awfully obstinate and
prejudiced. It's a sort of vanity. She worries Dartmouth a good deal.
He's a born poet, if ever a man was, and she wants him to go into
politics. Wants a _salon_ and all that sort of thing. She ought to
have it, too. Political intrigue would just suit her; she's diplomatic
and secretive. But Dartmouth prefers his study."

The lady from Spain raised her sympathetic, pensive eyes to the
Englishman's. "And the Señor Dar-muth? How he is? He is nice fellow? I
no meeting hime?"

"The best fellow that ever lived, God bless him!" exclaimed the young
man, enthusiastically. "He has the temperament of genius, and he isn't
always there when you want him--I mean, he isn't always in the right
mood; but he's a splendid specimen of a man, and the most likeable
fellow I ever knew--poor fellow!"

"Why you say 'poor fel-low'? He is no happy, no?"

"Well, you see," said the young man, succumbing to those lovely,
pitying eyes, and not observing that they gazed with equal tenderness
at the crimson wine in the cup beside her plate--"you see, he and his
wife are none too congenial, as I said. It makes her wild to have him
write, not only because she wants to cut a figure in London, and he
will always live in some romantic place like this, but she's in love
with him, in her way, and she's jealous of his very desk. That makes
things unpleasant about the domestic hearthstone. And then she doesn't