grave men with a desire to clasp her in their arms and kiss her.  This desire had scattered the desultory intellectual culture of Sir Charles at first sight.  His imagination invested her with the taste for the fine arts which he required from a wife, and he married her in her first season, only to discover that the amativeness in her temperament was so little and languid that she made all his attempts at fondness ridiculous, and robbed the caresses for which he had longed of all their anticipated ecstasy.  Intellectually she fell still further short of his hopes.  She looked upon his favorite art of painting as a pastime for amateur and a branch of the house-furnishing trade for professional artists.  When he was discussing it among his friends, she would offer her opinion with a presumption which was the more trying as she frequently blundered upon a sound conclusion whilst he was reasoning his way to a hollow one with his utmost subtlety and seriousness.  On such occasions his disgust did not trouble her in the least; she triumphed in it.  She had concluded that marriage was a greater folly, and men greater fools, than she had supposed; but such beliefs rather lightened her sense of responsibility than disappointed her, and, as she had plenty of money, plenty of servants, plenty of visitors, and plenty of exercise on horseback, of which she was immoderately fond, her time passed pleasantly enough.  Comfort seemed to her the natural order of life; trouble always surprised her.  Her husband’s friends, who mistrusted every future hour, and found matter for bitter reflection in many past ones, were to her only examples of the power of sedentary habits and excessive reading to make men tripped and dull.

One fine May morning, as she cantered along the avenue at Brandon Beeches on a powerful bay horse, the gates at the end opened and a young man sped through them on a bicycle.  He was of slight frame, with fine dark eyes and delicate nostrils.  When he recognized Lady Brandon he waved his cap, and when they met he sprang from his inanimate steed, at which the bay horse shied.

“Don’t, you silly beast!” she cried, whacking the animal with the butt of her whip.  “Though it’s natural enough, goodness knows!  How d’ye do?  The idea of anyone rich enough to afford a horse riding on a wheel like that!”

“But I am not rich enough to afford a horse,” he said, approaching her to pat the bay, having placed the bicycle against a tree.  “Besides, I am afraid of horses, not being accustomed to them; and I know nothing about feeding them.  My steed needs no food.  He doesn’t bite nor kick.  He never goes lame, nor sickens, nor dies, nor needs a groom, nor—­”

“That’s all bosh,” said Lady Brandon impetuously.  “It stumbles, and gives you the most awful tosses, and it goes lame by its treadles and thingamejigs coming off, and it wears out, and is twice as much trouble to keep clean and scrape the mud off as a horse, and all sorts of things.  I think the most ridiculous sight in the world is a man on a bicycle, working away with his feet as hard as he possibly can, and believing that his horse is carrying him instead of, as anyone can see, he carrying the horse.  You needn’t tell me that it isn’t easier to walk in the ordinary way than to drag a great dead iron thing along with you.  It’s not good sense.”