. Queens govern the
polite. Popularity with men, serviceable as it is for winning favouritism with
women, is of poor value to a sensitive gentleman, anxious even to prognostic
apprehension on behalf of his pride, his comfort and his prevalence. And men are
grossly purchaseable; good wines have them, good cigars, a goodfellow air: they
are never quite worth their salt even then; you can make head against their ill
looks. But the looks of women will at one blow work on you the downright
difference which is between the cock of lordly plume and the moulting. Happily
they may be gained: a clever tongue will gain them, a leg. They are with you to
a certainty if Nature is with you; if you are elegant and discreet: if the sun
is on you, and they see you shining in it; or if they have seen you
well-stationed and handsome in the sun. And once gained, they are your mirrors
for life, and far more constant than the glass. That tale of their caprice is
absurd. Hit their imaginations once, they are your slaves, only demanding common
courtier service of you. They will deny that you are ageing, they will cover you
from scandal, they will refuse to see you ridiculous. Sir Willoughby's instinct,
or skin, or outfloating feelers, told him of these mysteries of the influence of
the sex; he had as little need to study them as a lady breathed on.
    He had some need to know them, in fact; and with him the need of a
protection for himself called it forth; he was intuitively a conjuror in
self-defence, long-sighted, wanting no directions to the herb he was to suck at
when fighting a serpent. His dulness of vision into the heart of his enemy was
compensated by the agile sensitiveness obscuring but rendering him miraculously
active, and without supposing his need immediate, he deemed it politic to
fascinate Mrs. Mountstuart and anticipate ghastly possibilities in the future by
dropping a hint; not of Clara's fickleness, you may be sure; of his own, rather;
or more justly, of an altered view of Clara's character. He touched on the rogue
in porcelain.
    Set gently laughing by his relishing humour: »I get nearer to it,« he said.
    »Remember, I'm in love with her,« said Mrs. Mountstuart.
    »That is our penalty.«
    »A pleasant one for you.«
    He assented. »Is the rogue to be eliminated?«
    »Ask, when she's a
