explained.
"Baby comes home to-morrow, and if there's anything that annoys mother
to exasperation, it is to have to cluck and fuss round her chick like an
old hen. She loathes it, and Baby always makes her feel she must do it."

Denis pretended to be interested only in a casual way. "What sort of a
girl is--Baby?" he asked. "Is she like you?"

"I suppose she is like me to the same extent that I am like the
Warrior," the girl replied. "But she's most like the Warrior herself.
Imagine my mother at the age of seventeen and you know my sister. Surely
you have seen that old photograph of the Warrior as a girl in the
drawing-room? It is simply Baby over again,--or rather _vice versa_."

"I must look at it," said Denis thoughtfully.

"In fact they are so much alike," Cleopatra proceeded, "that they know
each other inside out, and annoy each other accordingly."

"They don't get on well then?" he enquired.

"Oh, yes, but Baby's a little trying at times. You see, she will forget
for instance that we call mother Edith, and have done ever since father
died; and she will suddenly shout Mother! out loud on crowded railway
platforms, or at the Academy, or worse still at garden parties, which
always gives the Warrior one of those nervous attacks for which she has
to go to Lord Henry."

Denis started almost imperceptibly at the mention of Lord Henry's name,
and turned an interested face towards the girl. "Do you know Lord
Henry?" he asked.

"No, I don't. There are some men the Warrior knows whom she never
introduces to me. I feel as if I knew Lord Henry very well indeed, but I
have never met him."

"You haven't lost much," Denis snapped.

"I beg your pardon?" Cleopatra exclaimed, smiling kindly but
deprecatingly, and arching her neck a little, as she scented the
injustice behind his remark.

"He dresses abominably," Denis pursued, "and from what I can gather is
benighted enough to believe in our beheaded sovereign Charles I."

"He must be very able though," the girl objected. "It isn't often, is
it, that our aristocracy distinguish themselves? And d'you know that he
is a Fellow of the Royal Society entirely on the strength of his
original research into the subject of modern nervous disorders?"

Denis pouted and smiled with an ostentatious show of incredulity. "He's
the son of the Marquis of Firle, remember!"

"Oh, but I don't believe that's got anything to do with it--honestly!"
she retorted.

Cleopatra knew her moth