Lord Banstead, not being learned in literary allusions, looked
bewildered. Viviette laughed.

"I'll translate if you like. You'll have to give up unlimited champagne
and whiskey and lead an ostensibly respectable life."

Whereupon Lord Banstead called her a little devil and went off in
dudgeon to London and took golden-haired ladies out to supper. When he
returned to the country he again offered her his title, and being
rejected a second time, again called her a little devil, and went back
to the fashionable supper-room. A third and a fourth time he executed
this complicated manoeuvre; and now news had reached Viviette that he
was in residence at Farfield, where he was boring himself exceedingly in
his father's scientific library.

"I suppose he'll be coming over to-day," said Viviette.

"Why do you encourage him?" asked Katherine.

"I don't," Viviette retorted. "I snub him unmercifully. If I am a
coquette it's with real men, not with the by-product of a chemical
experiment."

Katherine dropped her work and her underlip, and turned reproachful blue
eyes on the girl.

"Viviette!"

"Oh, she's shocked! Saint Nitouche is shocked!" Then, with a change of