erved.

Her own view of things differed in all essentials from the opinions
which were held by those about her, and were even inwardly opposed to
theories which her husband, with such gentlemanly eloquence, expounded
every Sunday morning. People thought themselves charitable when they
merely said that they did not understand Mrs. Wrottesley.

'The modern girl has a good effect upon society,' she continued; 'and
she is not a cat.'

'Ah, yes,' allowed Miss Abingdon, conceding a point, but prepared with
unanswerable argument; 'but will she ever be loved as the old eternal
feminine was loved?'

'Many people believe,' said Mrs. Wrottesley, 'that you can't be a man's
divinity and surround yourself with a golden halo, and be his pal at
the same time.'

'I remember,' said Miss Abingdon reminiscently, and feeling that she
was still scoring heavily against her friend--'I remember we used to
come down to breakfast in light gloves to match our gowns, and we drew
them on when the meal was over and only removed them in the
morning-room when we had taken out our embroidery to work at it.'

'And when embroidery bored us,' said Mrs. Wrottesley, 'we thought we
were in love.'

'A Miss Sherard stayed here last summer,' said Miss Abingdon, 'a friend
of Jane's, and she smoked cigarettes in her bedroom. I know that, for
I saw the ashes in her pin-tray.'

Miss Abingdon rather enjoyed making little excursions through her
guest's bedrooms of an afternoon, when she had the house to herself;
and, without deigning to touch or disturb anything, she knew pretty
well, for instance, whose complexion was real and whose was false, who
wore powder and who did not.

Mrs. Wrottesley glanced at her own figure in the drawing-room mirror;
her mantle disguised the fact that she had either a waist or a pair of
arms, and she gave a little dry smile as she reflected that she had
accepted a dolman cloak with all the other outward conventions of
orthodoxy as understood by society in rural England.

'My cousin, Peter Ogilvie, comes here every day,' said Miss Abingdon;
'he is crossing the lawn now. In former days these two young people
would have been talked about. (Peter is my cousin, you know, on my
father's side of the house--he is not related to Jane.) But neither
will probably mind in the least what is said about them, and for my own
part I am positively unable to say whether they care for each other or
not. Had I been Jane I would have sat in