ideas--" "And yet," as Mackinnon said afterwards, "she had been
telling me that I was a fool for the last three weeks."--"You men
grovel so in your ideas, that you cannot understand the feelings of
a true-hearted woman. What can his forgetfulness or his remembrance
be to me? Must not I remember this insult? Is it possible that I
should forget it?"

Mr. and Mrs. Mackinnon only had gone forward to meet her; but,
nevertheless, she spoke so loud that all heard her who were still
clustered round the spot on which we had dined.

"What has become of Mr. O'Brien?" a lady whispered to me.

I had a field-glass with me, and, looking round, I saw his hat as he
was walking inside the walls of the circus in the direction towards
the city. "And very foolish he must feel," said the lady.

"No doubt he is used to it," said another.

"But considering her age, you know," said the first, who might have
been perhaps three years younger than Mrs. Talboys, and who was not
herself averse to the excitement of a moderate flirtation. But then
why should she have been averse, seeing that she had not as yet
become subject to the will of any imperial lord?

"He would have felt much more foolish," said the third, "if she had
listened to what he said to her."

"Well I don't know," said the second; "nobody would have known
anything about it then, and in a few weeks they would have gradually