LADY PENELOPE

LADY PENELOPE BRADING Who had ideas of her own

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

LADY PENELOPE BRADING . . . . . . . . . Frontispiece

Who had ideas of her own.

CAPTAIN PLANTAGENET GOBY, V.C., LATE OF THE GUARDS

Who was ordered to read poetry.

LEOPOLD NORFOLK GORDON

Some said his real name was Isaac Levi.

AUSTIN DE VERE

He wrote poetry, and abhorred bulldogs and motor-cars.

THE MARQUIS DE RIVAULX

Anti-Semite to his manicured finger-tips.

RUFUS Q. PLANT

Born in Virginia.

CARTERET WILLIAMS, WAR CORRESPONDENT

He wrote with a red picturesqueness which was horribly attractive.

JIMMY CAREW, A.R.A.

He was the best looking of the whole "horde"

THE EARL OF PULBOROUGH

Clever; but indolent.

LADY PENELOPE

CHAPTER I.

All the absurd birthday celebrations were over, and Penelope was twenty-one.

She declared that her whole life was to be devoted to reform. She meant to reform society, to make it good and useful and straightforward, and simple and utterly delightful.

She let it be understood that men were in great need of her particular attention. They were too selfish and self-centred, too extravagant, too critical of each other, too vain. They acknowledged it humbly when she mentioned it, for Lady Penelope Brading's beauty was something to see and to talk of; major and minor poets agreed about it; artists desired to paint her and failed, as they always do when true loveliness shines on them. She had the colour of a Titian; the contours of a Correggio; the witchery of a Reynolds, and under wonderful raiment the muscles of a young Greek athlete. She wiped out any society in which she moved. When sweet Eclipse showed herself, the rest were nowhere. The other girls did not exist; she even made married beauties quake; as for the men, they endured everything she said, and worshipped her all the more. She was strange and new and a tonic. She had no sense of humour whatsoever; she could not understand a joke even if it was explained by an expert on the staff of Punch. This made her utterly delightful. Her beautiful seriousness was as refreshing as logic in a sermon. She believed in clergymen, in politicians, in the Deceased Wife's Sister, in all eminent physicians, in the London County Council, in the City of Westminster, in the British Constitution, in herself, and hygiene. She read the Times, the Athenæum, the Encyclopædia Britannica, Herbert Spencer, Mr. Kidd, and the late Mr. Drummond. She used Sandow's exercises and cold water. She was opposed to war; she admired