eagerly engaged scanning its imposing array of creams,
scents, powders, oils, salves, cosmetics, tresses of hair, and other
"aids," to be able to remember what she had come for, and simply stood
there like one fascinated and spellbound.

"Quick, child! can't you see you're wasting my time?" her mother
ejaculated irascibly. "Besides, you've got to get dressed too!"

This was an unfortunate remark. It brought out more vividly than was
necessary, the immense contrast between her own and her daughter's
toilet, and before she had time to think, Leonetta had replied.

"Oh, I've got heaps of time. It doesn't take me a moment. I'll race you
easily, even now."

Then a thought entered Leonetta's mind, which, to her credit be it said,
she resisted at first, but which was too overpowering to be completely
banished. It struck her for a moment that there was something faintly
comical, almost pathetically ridiculous, in this elderly matron taking
such laborious and elaborate pains to make herself attractive. Try as
she might, Leonetta, from her angle of vision of seventeen years, could
not repress the question: "What was it all for? What was the good of it
all? Who could possibly care? Was the end commensurate with the
exhaustive and exhausting means?" As the fierce light from the window
beat down upon her mother's face, it seemed so old, so wondrously old,
that all the formidable machinery of beautification about the room
struck a chord of compassion in the flapper's breast, which was,
however, at once compounded with humour in her mind. And then she could
control herself no longer, and was forced to smile,--one of those broad
mirthful smiles that are parlously near a laugh. Feeling, however, that
her mood was one of derision, she turned quickly aside,--but not soon
enough successfully to evade her mother's observant scrutiny.

Mrs. Delarayne was too well aware of the awkward possibilities of the
situation, and moreover too acutely sensitive generally, to be in any
doubt as to the meaning of her younger daughter's amusement, and the
flush beneath her ears spread to her cheeks. Simultaneously, however,
her handsome face seemed suddenly to grow wonderfully stern and
composed, and her eyes flashed with the fire which every woman seems to
hold in reserve for an anti-feminine attack.

"Wilmott," she said quietly, "will you leave the room a moment? I'll
ring when I want you."

Without even turning round to satisfy her curiosity, th