ome woman?"

"All perfectly proper," said Lady Dashwood, "but--oh, May--it's so
unspeakably dreary and desolating."

"Much older than he is?" asked May softly, with an emphasis on "much."

"Very much younger," said Lady Dashwood. "Only eighteen!"

"Not nice then?" asked May again softly.

"Not anything--except pretty--and"--here Lady Dashwood had a strident
bitterness in her voice--"and--she has a mother."

"Ah!" said May.

"You know Lady Belinda Scott?" asked Lady Dashwood.

May Dashwood moved her head in assent. "Not having enough money for
everything one wants is the root of all evil?" she said imitating
somebody.

"Belinda exactly! And all that you and I believe worth having in
life--is no more to her--than to--to a monkey up a tree!"

Mrs. Dashwood spoke thoughtfully. "We've come from monkeys and Lady
Belinda thinks a great deal of her ancestry."

"Then you understand why I'm anxious? You can imagine----"

May moved her head in response, and then she suddenly turned her face
towards her aunt and said in the same voice in which she had imitated
Belinda before--

"If dull people like to be dull, it's no credit to 'em!"

Lady Dashwood laughed, but it was a hard bitter laugh.

"Oh, May, you understand. Well, for the twenty-four hours that Belinda
was here, she was on her best behaviour. You see, she had plans! You
know her habit of sponging for weeks on people--she finds herself
appreciated by the 'Nouveaux Riches.' Her title appeals to them. Well,
Belinda has never made a home for her one child--not she!"

Mrs. Dashwood's lips moved. "Poor child!" she said softly, and there was
something in her voice that made Lady Dashwood aware of what she had
momentarily forgotten in her excitement, that the arm resting on her
shoulder was the arm of a woman not yet thirty, whose home had suddenly
vanished. It had been riddled with bullets and left to die at the
retreat from Mons.

Lady Dashwood fell into a sudden silence.

"Go on, dear Aunt Lena," said May Dashwood.

"Well, dear," said Lady Dashwood, drawing in a deep breath, "Linda got
wind of my coming here to put Jim straight and she pounced down upon me
like a vulture, with Gwen, asked herself for one night, and then talked
of 'old days, etc.,' and how she longed for Gwen to see something of our
'old-world city.' So she simply made me keep the child for 'a couple of
days,' then 'a week,' and then 'ten days'--and how could I turn the
child out of doors?