figured in her affairs of the heart was perfectly honest, and she
certainly made no attempt either to conceal their separate
existences, or to play them off one against the other. Neither
could it be said that she was a husband hunter; she had made up her
mind what sort of man she was likely to marry, and her forecast did
not differ very widely from that formed by her local acquaintances.
If her married life were eventually to turn out a failure, at least
she looked forward to it with very moderate expectations. Her love
affairs she put on a very different footing and apparently they
were the all-absorbing element in her life. She possessed the
happily constituted temperament which enables a man or woman to be
a "pluralist," and to observe the sage precaution of not putting
all one's eggs into one basket. Her demands were not exacting; she
required of her affinity that he should be young, good-looking, and
at least, moderately amusing; she would have preferred him to be
invariably faithful, but, with her own example before her, she was
prepared for the probability, bordering on certainty, that he would
be nothing of the sort. The philosophy of the "Garden of Kama" was
the compass by which she steered her barque and thus far, if she
had encountered some storms and buffeting, she had at least escaped
being either shipwrecked or becalmed.

Courtenay Youghal had not been designed by Nature to fulfil the
role of an ardent or devoted lover, and he scrupulously respected
the limits which Nature had laid down. For Molly, however, he had
a certain responsive affection. She had always obviously admired
him, and at the same time she never beset him with crude flattery;
the principal reason why the flirtation had stood the test of so
many years was the fact that it only flared into active existence
at convenient intervals. In an age when the telephone has