aunt the book years ago--confound him!--and ever
since she has been a nuisance to her friends. For my own part, you
know, I don't believe that Marcus Aurelius was quite such an ass as
Plato. He talks the same sort of perpetual common-places, but it isn't
about the True and the Good and the Beautiful. Would you like me to
repeat to you one of the Dialogues of Plato--about the immortality of
Mr. Cole and the moral effect of the South Kensington Museum?"

"No, dear, I shouldn't," said Sheila.

"You deprive yourself of a treat, but never mind. Here we are at my
aunt's house."

Sheila timidly glanced at the place while her husband paid the cabman.
It was a tall, narrow, dingy-looking house of dark brick, with some
black green ivy at the foot of the walls, and with crimson curtains
formally arranged in every one of the windows. If Mrs. Lavender was a
rich old lady, why did she live in such a gloomy building? Sheila had
seen beautiful white houses in all parts of London: her own house, for
example, was ever so much more cheerful than this one; and yet she
had heard with awe of the value of this depressing little mansion in
Kensington Gore.

The door was opened by a man, who showed them up stairs and announced
their names. Sheila's heart beat quickly. She entered the drawing-room
with a sort of mist before her eyes, and found herself going forward
to a lady who sat at the farther end. She had a strangely vivid
impression, amid all her alarm, that this old lady looked like the
withered kernel of a nut. Or was she not like a cockatoo? It
was through no anticipation of dislike to Mrs. Lavender that the
imagination of the girl got hold of that notion. But the little
old lady held her head like a cockatoo. She had the hard, staring,
observant and unimpressionable eyes of a cockatoo. What was there,
moreover, about the decorations of her head that reminded one of a
cockatoo when it puts up its crest and causes its feathers to look
like sticks of celery?

"Aunt Caroline, this is my wife."

"I am glad to see you, dear," said the old lady, giving her hand, but
not rising. "Sit down. When you are a little nervous you ought to sit
down. Frank, give me that ammonia from the mantelpiece."

It was a small glass phial, and labeled "Poison." She smelt the
stopper, and then handed it to Sheila, telling her to do the same.

"Why did your maid do your hair in such a way?" she asked suddenly.

"I haven't got a maid," said Sheila, "and