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Rh memory, and that women have no memory. At this proposition two crimson spots rose to Mrs. Boulter's cheeks, and she demanded the name and presumable dwelling place of the author, but, on learning that he had committed suicide at the age of twenty-four, she ejaculated in stern triumph: "Exactly what I should have expected! Beware how you give currency to his ideas."

"Do you expect me to commit suicide?" rejoined Erhart, his long blonde face wrinkling in a sarcastic smile. "No, madam, I intend to live to make the statue of the first Woman-President. She will wear knee-breeches, and, for the occasion, a Roman toga. Her pedestal will be composed of a sewing-machine and an overturned cradle, with the motto, 'Per aspera ad nauseam.'" At this point Teresa interfered and suppressed Erhart, and Basil began to talk to the Englishman, whose name Teresa had not made out, about the East, with which apparently the latter had some official connection. So far he had said very little, and seemed to contemplate with an amused and slightly astonished air the incongruous company in which he found himself. He was a man of an unusual type, evidently not of unmixed English blood, above the medium height, lean and delicately made, dark, and with a curious colour in which grey predominated