se. A
twist of the knob between two fingers and the world was silently shut
out.

Now too that she was beautiful once more she revelled in mirrors. The
existing ones in her bedroom and in the boudoir were not enough; they
were public, unintimate. She had a high mirror fixed in the bathroom, so
that she could see herself in her freshness, covered with pearly beads
like a naiad. She rejoiced in her beauty, in her renewed strength; she
often stood for many minutes in the dim steamy light of the room,
analysing her body, its grace and youth, with a growing consciousness of
latent power. Then, suddenly, the faint violet streaks of the varicose
veins would intrude upon the rite and she would wrap herself up
jealously in her bath robe so that not even the mirror should be a
confidant of the past.

CHAPTER V

WEEK after week passed on, and now monotony drew her stifling cloak over
Victoria. Cairns was still in a state of beatitude which made him an
unexciting companion; satisfied in his egoism, it never came into his
mind that Victoria could tire of her life. He spent many afternoons in
the back garden under a rose-covered pergola. By his side was a little
table with a syphon, a decanter of whisky, and a box of cigars; he read
desultorily, sometimes the latest motor novel, at other times the
improving memoirs of eighteenth century noblewomen. Now and then he
would look approvingly at Victoria in plain white drill, delightfully
mischievous under a sun-bonnet, and relapse into his book. Once he
quoted 'A flask of wine, a book of verse. . . .' and Victoria went into
sudden fits of laughter when she remembered Neville Brown. The single
hackneyed line seemed to link malekind together.

Cairns was already talking of going away. June was oppressively hot and
he was hankering after some quiet place where he might do some
sea-fishing and get some golf. He was becoming dangerously fat; and
Victoria, foreseeing a long and very cheap holiday, favoured the idea in
every way. They could go up to Scotland later too; but Cairns rather
hesitated about this, for he neither cared to show off Victoria before
the people he knew on the moors, nor to leave her for a fortnight. He
was paying the penalty of Capua. His plans were set back, however, by
serious trouble which had taken place on his Irish estate, his though
still in the hands of Marmaduke Cairns's executors. There had been
nightriding, cattle driving, some boycotting. The situa