LITMIR.BIZ

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but the laziest lay under the delusion that laziness was their godlike duty. They needed the spur. They might be brutes in the way of business (you should read what has been written in a New York paper about Plant, or hear what a certain disembowelled set in the city say of Gordon, who turned them inside out), but they played the game. They knew what cricket was, even when it was played with red-hot shot, and not to carry one's bat meant blue ruin. After saying that they were all this, which implies they were men of honour, each according to the code of their fellows (for this is honour), I shall show you how they came, or how many of them came, to utter grief in curious ways under very odd stresses. What can a man of honour do in an entirely new position, one not provided for in any code? It would puzzle a jury of archangels to say.

      "Have you heard?" asked Goby, with wondering eyes.

      "What she says?" replied Gordon.

      "Shade of Titian!" cried Jimmy Carew.

      "Well, I'm damned!" said Carteret Williams.

      "This is romance," sighed the De Vere.

      "I'm—I'm—that's what I am," whistled Rufus Q. Plant.

      "Imphm!" murmured Lord Bramber.

      "Sapristi!" shrieked the French marquis.

      Wasn't it enough to make them exclaim when it was reported all over London, and in the country, and in papers and cables to New York that Penelope Brading had sworn, with a great oath, that she meant to upset the holy apple-cart of all tradition (at least since Adam) by never letting any one know who her husband was! They knew her, and knew her word was sacred. Now let all unwhite men, all unrealities, all ghosts, all vain folks vanish one by one.

      With one voice the "horde" exclaimed, as they set their teeth:

      "Well, we don't care!"

      What does this say for Penelope's faculties of distinguishing men from monkeys, and white from gray?

      CHAPTER III.

      All that happened now only shows one how the greatest sense of modesty may end in the biggest advertisement. Penelope, though determined to do her duty, which was mainly to educate mankind, meant doing it unobtrusively, and there was not a man or woman in the British Isles or in the United States who did not hear of her quiet intention. The cables hummed with Penelope's name; it was whispered in the great deeps of the sea; wireless telegraphists caught Lady Penelope Brading out of Hertzian waves; ships ploughed the ocean laden with Penelope and copy about her.

      In two twos the notoriety hunters in London sank into insignificance; professional beauties were neglected, and the sale of their photographs fell off. There was an immense demand for Penelope's, which, luckily, no one could satisfy until an enterprising New Yorker flooded the United States with portraits. Before it was found out that this particular photograph was one of a young actress whom he proposed introducing to the public shortly, he sold amazing quantities of them. When there was one in every inquiring household from Hudson Bay to the Gulf of Mexico, the real sitter for it wrote to the papers and complained bitterly. She is now playing to crowded houses. There are many paths to fame.

      Poor Pen was at first horribly shocked. She was young. And yet she was human. She said: "Oh, dear, oh, dear!" and, swearing that she would never read a word about herself, she subscribed to a newspaper cutting agency.

      From the New York papers alone one could cull a highly coloured account of her whole history. And they gave Bradstock's history, too, not omitting his two-word exclamatory speech in the House of Lords. Bradstock stood it like a Trojan, like a Spartan. He never turned a hair even when they said that he was going to marry Penelope himself. They gave a full biography of Titania, with a real photograph. When the duchess saw it, she was silent for full five minutes, such was the shock it gave her. Then she talked for five hours, and called on the American ambassador.

      "Cannot you do anything for me?" asked Titania, perorating.

      "I'm afraid not, your Grace," said the ambassador, wearily. He said it was an awful thing to be an ambassador sometimes, though it had its points.

      Being discomfited for once by an ambassador, she turned on Bradstock, and rent him limb from limb. And then she went to Penelope.

      "I'm only doing my duty," said Penelope, with her beautiful lips as firm as Grecian marble.

      "Your duty!" shrieked the duchess; "and look at the papers!"

      "I can't help what they say, aunt. One's duty—"

      "They tell my weight," said Titania. "How did they know?"

      "They must have guessed it," said Penelope.

      "I don't look it," pleaded the duchess, now suddenly plaintive.

      "No, no, dear auntie, you don't," said poor Penelope. "Oh, it's cruel of them."

      "Help me, then," said Titania. "Get married at once in a cathedral, and all this will stop. I'll ask the dear archbishop to officiate, Penelope. Oh, my darling!"

      But Penelope became Pentelican marble again; she froze into a severe goddess, and she saw Titania weep.

      "It's scandalous! Oh, and they have a list of them all," said Titania.

      Indeed, the New York Dustman had the "horde" set out in a row like the entries for the Derby. They said the betting was on Rufus Q. Plant, of course. They gave a short and succulent biography of them all. They headed the list "The Lady Penelope Handicap." They used some slang about "weight for age."

      "Great heavens!" said Titania, "all town is ringing with it. If this is the result of looking on marriage as one's private business, give me publicity!"

      There would have been less of it if a prince had married a publican's daughter in St. Paul's, and had presented the dean with a set of pewter pots.

      "And if she does what she says!"

      The only men who did not talk much about Penelope were naturally those who aspired to win her. Every one neglected politics and sport to discuss her. She became politics and sport. Huge sums of money were at stake as to whether she would keep her word; as to the length of time she would keep the secret, and as to who the man was to be. There were public and private books made on the series of events. And there was a Penelope party and an opposition. Many young people who were revolutionary in their sentiments said she was right. There was a Penelope Cave in the House of Commons. Some of those who fought year in and year out for the Deceased Wife's Sister backed her up. It was whispered that the prince was a Penelopian; two princesses threatened with objectionable persons of the royal blood were heard to observe that there was something in what she said. Penelope was within measurable distance of becoming a national, or even an international, question. Mrs. X. wrote an article in the Fortnightly on "Secret Marriage in History." Mr. Z. sat down and wrote a novel, bristling with "wit and epigram," in ten days, which ran into the third edition of two hundred and fifty copies in thirty. It was said that questions were to be asked in the House. A play on the subject was forbidden by the lord chamberlain. The wittiest article on the subject was written by a Mr. Shaw. He argued that no really beautiful woman had any right to be married at all. He said plaintively that it wasn't fair, and convinced the ugly in two syllogisms.

      And, as the result of this, Penelope went away into the country, though it was May, with Ethel Mytton and Mrs. Cadwallader, who was called Chloe, and stood by Pen remorselessly in every difficulty. For Pen had helped her out of an awful mess, the history of which would make a whole story of itself. As a result of it, Cadwallader was in the Rocky Mountains shooting, and a certain young soldier was taking too much liquor and too little quinine in Nigeria, and Chloe got her diamonds back from Messrs. Attenborough, and was eternally grateful to Penelope in consequence.

      "And I shall send for them one by one," said Penelope. "They can come down by the ten o'clock train from Paddington, and go back by the five o'clock one from here. And after lunch I shall explain my ideas to them."

      "And I'll be with you," said Chloe, who was as dark-locked as a raven's wing.

      "Oh, I don't mind," said Penelope; "of course you will. I'm too young,

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