rightfully about a son. But Peggy'll
be a help to her."

"And what helps her will help you, my dear; mind that."

"Oh, rather," he said vaguely. "The worst of it is she isn't very strong.
Peggy, I mean."

"Oh, rubbish," said Mrs. Hannay. "_I_ was a peaky, piny baby, and look at
me now!"

He looked at her and laughed.

"Sarah's coming in this evening," said she. "I hope you won't mind."

"Why should I?"

"Why, indeed? Nobody need mind poor Sarah now. I don't know what's
happened. She went abroad last year, and came back quite chastened. I
suppose you know it's all come to nothing?"

"What has?"

"Her marriage."

"Oh, her marriage. She has told _you_ about it?"

"My dear, she's told everybody about it. He was an angel; and he's been
going to marry her for the last four years. I say, Wallie, do you think
he really was?"

"Do I think he really was an angel? Or do I think he really was going to
marry her?"

"If he _was_, you know, perhaps he wouldn't."

"Oh no, if he was, he would; because he wouldn't know what he was in
for. Anyhow the angel has flown, has he? I fancy some rumour must have
troubled his bright essence."

Mrs. Hannay suppressed her own opinion, which was that the angel, wings
and all, was merely a stage property in the comedy of respectability that
poor Sarah had been playing in so long. He was one of many brilliant and
entertaining fictions which had helped to restore her to her place in
society. "And you really," she repeated, "don't mind meeting her?"

"I don't think I mind anything very much now."

The entrance of the lady showed him how very little there really was to
mind. Lady Cayley had (as her looking-glass informed her) both gone off
and come on quite remarkably in the last three years. Her face presented
a paler, softer, larger surface to the eye. Her own eye had gained in
meaning and her mouth in sensuous charm; while her figure had acquired a
quality to which she herself gave the name of "presence." Other women
of forty might go about looking like incarnate elegies on their dead
youth; Lady Cayley's "presence" was as some great ode, celebrating the
triumph of maturity.

She took the place Mrs. Hannay had vacated, settling down by Majendie
among the cushions. "How delightfully unexpected," she murmured, "to
meet _you_ here."

She ignored the occasion of their last meeting, just as she had then
ignored the circumstances of their last parting. Lady Cayley owed her
success