
they shall not brow-beat me out of it,« it is that trifling pleasures are
noisiest about the heart of human nature: not that they govern us absolutely.
There is mob-rule in minds as in communities, but the Countess had her appetites
in excellent drill. This pic-nic surrendered, represented to her defeat in all
its ignominy. The largest longest-headed of schemes ask occasionally for
something substantial and immediate. So the Countess stipulated with Providence
for the pic-nic. It was a point to be passed: »Thorough flood, thorough fire.«
    In vain poor Andrew Cogglesby, to whom the dinner had been torture, and who
was beginning to see the position they stood in at Beckley, begged to be allowed
to take them away, or to go alone. The Countess laughed him into submission. As
a consequence of her audacious spirits she grew more charming and more natural,
and the humour that she possessed, but which, like her other faculties, was
usually subordinate to her plans, gave spontaneous bursts throughout the day,
and delighted her courtiers. Nor did the men at all dislike the difference of
her manner with them, and with the ladies. I may observe that a woman who shows
a marked depression in the presence of her own sex will be thought very superior
by ours; that is, supposing she is clever and agreeable. Manhood distinguishes
what flatters it. A lady approaches. »We must be proper,« says the Countess, and
her hearty laugh dies with suddenness and is succeeded by the maturest gravity.
And the Countess can look a profound merriment with perfect sedateness when
there appears to be an equivoque in company. Finely secret are her glances, as
if under every eye-lash there lurked the shade of a meaning. What she meant was
not so clear. All this was going on, and Lady Jocelyn was simply amused, and sat
as at a play.
    »She seems to have stepped out of a book of French memoirs,« said her
ladyship. »La vie galante et dévote - voilà la Comtesse.«
    In contradistinction to the other ladies, she did not detest the Countess
because she could not like her.
    »Where 's the harm in her?« she asked. »She doesn't damage the men, that I
can see. And a person you can laugh at and with, is inexhaustible.«
    »And how long is she to stay here?« Mrs. Shorne inquired. Mrs. Melville
remarking: »Her visit appears to be inexhaustible.«
    »I suppose she 'll
