illiner could ever induce her to do it in a style later
than 1887. The larger number of women have had some period of their
lives when the fashion has happened to suit them, or when, for some
reason or another, they have had a special success, and most of these
cling fondly to that epoch. Lady Kellynch never got away from 1887 and
the time of Queen Victoria's first Jubilee. All the fads of the hour
seemed to have passed over her since then, from bicycling to flying,
from classical dancing or ragtime to enthusiasm about votes for women;
the various movements had passed over her without leaving any hurt or
effect. Lady Kellynch had had a success in 1887; she cherished tenderly
a photograph of herself in an enormous bustle, with an impossibly small
waist, a thick high fringe over her eyes, and a tight dog-collar. The
bald bare look about the ears, and the extraordinary figure resembling a
switchback made her look very much older then than she did now. But more
than one smart young soldier (now, probably, steady retired generals,
who passed their time saying that the country was going to the dogs), an
attache long since married and sunk into domestic life, and one or two
other men had greatly admired her; she had had her little dignified
flirtations, much as she adored the late Sir Percy Kellynch; her
portrait had been painted by Herkomer, and the Prince of Wales (as he
then was) had looked at her through his opera glass during the
performance of Gounod's _Romeo and Juliet_. These were things not to be
forgotten. When her husband died, Percy married and Clifford went to
school, and Lady Kellynch was left alone in her big house in South
Kensington, she became again what I call old-maidish. She had a hundred
little rules and fussy little arrangements, of which the slightest
disorganisation drove her to distraction. She had long consultations
every day with the cook at nine o'clock as to what was to be done with
what was left. She liked to be domestic, and would stand over the man
who was cleaning the windows and tell him how to do it. Certain things
she liked to do herself.

In the drawing-room was a chandelier of the seventies, beautiful in its
way, though out of date, and she used to take the lustres down and
polish them with her own fingers, taking a great pride in doing this
herself. She cared really for no one in the world but her two sons, but
she was extremely fond, in her own way, of society and of receiving. She
did