t
served for all outdoor functions, and an ebony stick, called "the wand"
by the denizens of the slums, who adored her, completed her picturesque
toilette.

The majority feared this _grande dame_, a minority, if they had had the
chance, would have fawned upon her in public and laughed at or
caricatured her in private; those who really knew her, and they lived
principally east of London town, would willingly have laid themselves
down and allowed her ridiculously small feet, invariably shod in
crimson, buckled, outrageously high-heeled shoes, to trample upon their
prostrate bodies, if it would have given her pleasure so to do.

She adored young things, and had an enormous family of godsons and
goddaughters, out of which crowd Ben Kelham and Damaris Hethencourt
were supreme favourites, and about whom she had been weaving plots when
she had written her letter of invitation to the Squire.

She smoked Three Castles, which she kept in a jewelled Louis XV
snuff-box, and had a perfect tartar of a maid, who simply worshipped
her.

Of a truth, a long description of a very old and very wise old woman,
of whom the great Queen had once remarked to her Consort:

"I wish I were not a queen, so that _I_ might curtsey to Olivia."

And in this wise old woman's jewel-covered hands Fate placed the
twisted threads of passion, youth and love, and a wiser selection she
could not have made.

A bronchitic cough had taken her to Cairo just as a sooted-up lung,
left behind by the pneumonia which had followed the hunting accident
had taken Ben Kelham to Heliopolis, and for recuperation of body or
mind there is nothing to equal an Egyptian winter, even in a
tourist-ridden centre.

Ben Kelham, Big Ben for short, on account of his six-feet-two, was heir
to Sir Andrew Kelham, Bart., whose estate joined the lands of Squire
Hethencourt, whom he looked upon as his greatest friend, and vice
versa. Educated at Harrow, Ben Kelham and Hugh Carden Ali had been
known on the Hill as David and Jonathan; so that the crimson, golden
and brown threads were more than uncommonly twisted.

Ben was heavy in build and slow in every way, but he was still more
sure than slow, and had never been known to give up when once he had
set his mind to the accomplishment of a task, and although he had stood
in absolute awe of beautiful Damaris since the day she had lengthened
her skirts, yet had he determined to make her his wife, even if it
meant following in Jacob's