laying down the law about things I'm quite ignorant of."

He said: "Not at all. You're in a position to judge much better than I.
You people outside the wood can see it, in its entirety. We who are in the
middle of the horrid thing can't see it for the trees."

It was this little speech so simple, so courteous and yet not lacking a
touch of irony, that first made Lady Auriol, in the words which she used
when telling me of it afterwards, sit up and take notice.

Bridge, the monomania which tainted Sir Julius Verity-Stewart's courtly
soul, pinned Lady Auriol down to the green-covered table for the rest of
the evening. But the next day she set herself to satisfy her entirely
unreprehensible curiosity concerning Colonel Lackaday.

Lady Auriol, born with even more curiosities than are the ordinary
birthright of a daughter of Eve, had spent most of her life in trying to
satisfy them. In most cases she had been successful. Here be it said that
Lady Auriol was twenty-eight, unmarried, and almost beautiful when she took
the trouble to do her hair and array herself in becoming costume. As to
maiden's greatest and shyest curiosity, well--as a child of her epoch--she
knew so much about the theory of it that it ceased to be a curiosity at
all. Besides, love--she had preserved a girl's faith in beauty--was a
psychological mystery not to be solved by the cold empirical methods which
could be employed in the solution of other problems. I must ask you to bear
this in mind when judging Lady Auriol. She had once fancied herself in love
with an Italian poet, an Antinous-like young man of impeccable manners,
boasting an authentic pedigree which lost itself in the wolf that suckled
Romulus and Remus. None of your vagabond ballad-mongers. A guest when she
first met him of the Italian Ambassador. To him, Prince Charming, knight