loathsome as Horace's Canidia, but without her genius or her
power.

"I am getting an old woman," sighed Mrs. Winstanley. "It is lucky I am
not without resources against solitude and age."

Her resources were a tepid appreciation of modern idyllic poetry, as
exemplified in the weaker poems of Tennyson, and the works of Adelaide
Proctor and Jean Ingelow, a talent for embroidering conventional
foliage and flowers on kitchen towelling, and for the laborious
conversion of Nottingham braid into Venetian point-lace.

She had taken it into her head of late to withdraw herself altogether
from society, save from such friends who liked her well enough, or were
sufficiently perplexed as to the disposal of their lives, to waste an
occasional hour over gossip and orange pekoe. She had now permanently
assumed that _role_ of an invalid which she had always somewhat
affected.

"I am really not well enough to go to dinner-parties, Conrad," she
said, when her husband politely argued against her refusal of an
invitation, with just that mild entreaty which too plainly means, "I
don't care a jot whether you go with me or stay at home."

"But, my dear Pamela, a little gaiety would give you a fillip."

"No, it would not, Conrad. It would worry me to go to Lady Ellangowan's
in one of last season's dresses; and I quite agree with you that I must
spend no more money with Theodore."

"Why not wear your black velvet?"

"Too obvious a _pis aller_. I have not enough diamonds to carry off
black velvet."

"But your fine old lace--rose-point, I think you call it--surely that
would carry off black velvet for once in a way."

"My dear Conrad, Lady Ellangowan knows my rose-point by heart. She
always compliments me about it--an artful way of letting me know often
she has seen it. 'Oh there is that rose-point of yours, dear Mrs.
Winstanley; it is too lovely.' I know her! No, Conrad; I will not go to
the Ellangowans in a dress made last year; or in any _rechauffe_ of
velvet and lace. I hope I have a proper pride that would always
preserve me from humiliation of that kind. Besides, I am not strong
enough to go to parties. You may not believe me, Conrad, but I am
really ill."

The Captain put on an unhappy look, and murmured something sympathetic:
but he did not believe in the reality of his wife's ailments. She had
played the invalid more or less ever since their marriage; and he had
grown accustomed to the assumption as a part of his wife's dai