pity prepared
to go to sleep.

"And I'll have to go to work to-morrow," she sighed, planning her next
silk dress as she did up the Titian hair in curlers.

CHAPTER III

WHEN the world was considerably younger it dressed children in
imitation of its adults--those awful headdresses and heavy stays, long
skirts to trip up tender little feet, and jewelled collars to make
tiny necks ache. Now that the world "is growing evil and the time is
waxing late" the grown-ups have turned the tables and they dress like
the children--witness thereof to be found in the costume of Aunt Belle
Todd, Mark Constantine's sister, who had shared her brother's fortunes
ever since his wife had been presented with the marble monument.

Like all women who have ceased having birthdays Aunt Belle had not
ceased struggling. She still had hopes of a financier who would carry
her off in a storm of warmed-over romance to a castle in Kansas. Her
first husband was Thomas Todd, the carpenter, chiefly distinguished
for falling off a three-story building on which he was working and
never harming a hair of his head; also for singing first bass in the
village quartet. Aunt Belle had slightly recoloured her past since she
had lived with her brother. The account of Mr. Todd's singing in the
quartet was made to resemble a brilliant debut in grand opera which
was abandoned because of Aunt Belle's dislike of stage life and its
temptations, while his rolling off the three-story building was never
alluded to except when Mark Constantine wished to tease.

She was a short, plump person with permanently jet-black hair and
twinkling eyes. Prepared to forgo all else save elegance, she had
brought up her gorgeous niece with the idea that it was never possible
to have too much luxury. Seated in the Gorgeous Girl's dressing room
she now presented excellent proof that the world was growing very old
indeed, for her plump self was squeezed into a short purple affair
made like a pinafore, her high-heeled bronze slippers causing her to
totter like a mandarin's wife; and strings of coral beads and a gold
lorgnette rose and fell with rhythmic motion as she sighed very
properly over her niece's marriage.

"It will never be the same, darling," she was saying, glancing in
a mirror to see if the light showed the rouge boundaries too
clearly--"never quite the same. You'll understand when your daughter
marries--for you have been just as dear as one."

Beatrice, who was bus