capable of doing so; she just made him feel gay and frolicsome with her
deliciously _rusé_ view of the world and life in general. He forgot his
ruffled temper of the morning, and by the time they had returned for
tea, was his brilliant self again, and quite ready to sit in a low chair
at his hostess's side, while she leaned back among the cushions of her
sofa, in her own sitting-room, whither she had enticed him during that
nondescript hour before dinner, when each person could do what he
pleased.

"Is not Cora sweet?" she said, smoothing the brocade beneath her hand.
Her sitting-room had been arranged by the artist who had done the house,
as a perfect bower of Italian Sixteenth Century art. Mr. Jephson, the
artist, had assured her that this period would make a perfect background
for her fresh and rather voluptuous coloring; it had not become so
_banal_ as any of the French Louis'. And so Arabella had been instructed
to drum into her head the names of the geniuses of that time, and their
works, and she could now babble sweetly all about Giorgione, Paolo
Veronese and Titian's later works without making a single mistake. And
while the pictures bored her unspeakably, she took a deep pleasure in
her own cleverness about them, and delighted in tracing the influence
Paolo Veronese must have had upon Boucher, a hint from Arabella which
she had announced as an inspiration of her own.

She had tea-gowns made to suit this period, and adopted the stately
movements which were evidently the attribute of that time.

John Derringham thought her superb. If he had been really in love with
her, he might have seen through her--and not cared--just as if she had
not attracted him at all, he would certainly have taken her measure and
enjoyed laying pitfalls for her. But as it was, his will was always