oung men whom Mr. Cooke expected in
his private car, and whose appearances, heights, and temperaments the
Celebrity obtained from Mr. Cooke, carefully noted, and compared with
those of the young women. Be it said in passing that Mrs. Cooke
had nothing to do with any of it, but exhibited an almost criminal
indifference. Mr. Cooke had even chosen the favors; charity forbids that
I should say what they were.

Owing to the frequent consultations which these preparations made
necessary the Celebrity was much in the company of my client, which
he came greatly to prefer to mine, and I therefore abandoned my
determination to leave Asquith. I was settling down delightedly to
my old, easy, and unmolested existence when Farrar and I received
an invitation, which amounted to a summons, to go to Mohair and make
ourselves generally useful. So we packed up and went. We made an odd
party before the arrival of the Ten, particularly when the Celebrity
dropped in for lunch or dinner. He could not be induced to remain
permanently at Mohair because Miss Trevor was at Asquith, but he
appropriated a Hempstead cart from the Mohair stables and made the trip
sometimes twice in a day. The fact that Mrs. Cooke treated him with
unqualified disapproval did not dampen his spirits or lessen the
frequency of his visits, nor, indeed, did it seem to create any breach
between husband and wife. Mr. Cooke took it for granted that his friends
should not please his wife, and Mrs. Cooke remarked to Farrar and
me that her husband was old enough to know better, and too old to be
taught. She loved him devotedly and showed it in a hundred ways, but she
was absolutely incapable of dissimulation.

Thanks to Mrs. Cooke, our visit to Mohair was a pleasant one. We were
able in many ways to help in the arrangements, especially Farrar, who
had charge of decorating the grounds. We saw but little of Mr. Cooke and
the Celebrity.

The arrival of the Ten was an event of importance, and occurred the
day of the dance. I shall treat the Ten as a whole because they did not
materially differ from one another in dress or habits or ambition or
general usefulness on this earth. It is true that Mr. Cooke had been
able to make delicate distinctions between them for the aid of the
Celebrity, but such distinctions were beyond me, and the power to make
them lay only in a long and careful study of the species which I could
not afford to give. Likewise the life of any one of the Ten was