"Oh, yes; but they bore me. I believe in quinine as a drug, but I think it is very nasty as a flavour."
Lord Wrexham smiled indulgently. "The fact is that you have such a gay and sunny nature yourself that too much seriousness oppresses you and overpowers you. Ethereal beings cannot exist in a heavy atmosphere."
"I cannot endure the sort of good people who have their biographies written," exclaimed Isabel.
"Nevertheless, biography is the style of fiction I most affect," said Mr. Madderley, "especially the biographies of people I have met. It is so interesting to learn that what one had despised as dulness was in reality genius; and that what one had regretted as rudeness was in reality the scorn of a great soul for conventions."
"While what one condemned as bad temper was actually a noble struggle against evil," added Isabel.
"A saint in crape is twice a saint in print," murmured the artist.
"You shall write our biographies, Mr. Madderley, and show how I was wise, Lord Bobby was profound, and Lord Wrexham was—I don't know what Lord Wrexham had better be."
"Amusing, perhaps," suggested his lordship quietly.
"I should like to see you with a really serious-minded man, and hear how you got on with him," said Mr. Madderley. "I mean one of the sort of men who go in for duties and responsibilities and queer fads of that sort, and always keep a tame conscience in full work on the premises."
"Isn't it funny," remarked Isabel thoughtfully, "that if a woman talks to a man about his soul, other women call her a saint; while if she talks to him about his heart, they call her a flirt? They have not the sense to know that the flirtiness consists in talking to the man about himself at all."