aight before him, a
furrow between his brows. He spoke at last:

"She looks like a lady. I know nothing else about her."

The smile deepened round Miltoun's mouth.

"Why should you want to know anything else?"

Lord Valleys shrugged. His philosophy had hardened.

"I understand for one thing," he said coldly; "that there is a matter of
a divorce. I thought you took the Church's view on that subject."

"She has not done wrong."

"You know her story, then?"

"No."

Lord Valleys raised his brows, in irony and a sort of admiration.

"Chivalry the better part of discretion?"

Miltoun answered:

"You don't, I think, understand the kind of feeling I have for Mrs.
Noel. It does not come into your scheme of things. It is the only
feeling, however, with which I should care to marry, and I am not likely
to feel it for anyone again."

Lord Valleys felt once more that uncanny sense of insecurity. Was this
true? And suddenly he felt Yes, it is true! The face before him was the
face of one who would burn in his own fire sooner than depart from his
standards. And a sudden sense of the utter seriousness of this dilemma
dumbed him.

"I can say no more at the moment," he muttered and got up from the
table.

CHAPTER XI

Lady Casterley was that inconvenient thing--an early riser. No woman in
the kingdom was a better judge of a dew carpet. Nature had in her time
displayed before her thousands of those pretty fabrics, where all the
stars of the past night, dropped to the dark earth, were waiting to
glide up to heaven again on the rays of the sun. At Ravensham she walked
regularly in her gardens between half-past seven and eight, and when
she paid a visit, was careful to subordinate whatever might be the local
custom to this habit.

When therefore her maid Randle came to Barbara's maid at seven o'clock,
and said: "My old lady wants Lady Babs to get up," there was no
particular pain in the breast of Barbara's maid, who was doing up her
corsets. She merely answered "I'll see to it. Lady Babs won't be too
pleased!" And ten minutes later she entered that white-walled room which
smelled of pinks-a temple of drowsy sweetness, where the summer light
was vaguely stealing through flowered chintz curtains.

Barbara was sleeping with her cheek on her hand, and her tawny hair,
gathered back, streaming over the pillow. Her lips were parted; and the
maid thought: "I'd like to have hair and a mouth like that!" She
could not help