was examining the pictures upon them. Lady Manby, a
woman with a pyramid of brown hair and an aggressively flat back, was
telling a story. Evidently it was a comic history of disaster. Her
gestures were full of deliberate exaggeration, and she appeared to be
impersonating by turns two or three different people, each of whom had
a perfectly ridiculous personality. Lord Holme burst into a roar of
laughter. His big bass voice vibrated through the room. Suddenly Lady
Holme laughed too.

"Why are you laughing?" Robin Pierce asked rather harshly. "You didn't
hear what Lady Manby said."

"No, but Fritz is so infectious. I believe there are laughter microbes.
What a noise he makes! It's really a scandal."

And she laughed again joyously.

"You don't know much about women if you think any story of Lady Manby's
is necessary, to prompt my mirth. Poor dear old Fritz is quite enough.
There he goes again!"

Robin Pierce began to look stiff with constraint, and just then Sir
Donald Ulford, in his progress round the walls, reached the sofa where
they were sitting.

"You are very fortunate to possess this Cuyp, Lady Holme," he said in a
voice from which all resonance had long ago departed.

"Alas, Sir Donald, cows distress me! They call up sad memories. I was
chased by one in the park at Grantoun when I was a child. A fly had
stung it, so it tried to kill me. This struck me as unreason run riot,
and ever since then I have wished the Spaniards would go a step farther
and make cow-fights the national pastime. I hate cows frankly."

Sir Donald sat down in an armchair and looked, with his faded blue eyes,
into the eyes of his hostess. His drawn yellow face was melancholy, like
the face of one who had long been an invalid. People who knew him
well, however, said there was nothing the matter with him, and that his
appearance had not altered during the last twenty years.

"You can hate nothing beautiful," he said with a sort of hollow
assurance.

"I think cows hideous."

"Cuyp's?"

"All cows. You've never had one running after you."

She took up her gloves, which she had laid down on the table beside her,
and began to pull them gently through her fingers. Both Sir Donald and
Robin looked at her hands, which were not only beautiful in shape but
extraordinarily intelligent in their movements. Whatever they did they
did well, without hesitation or bungling. Nobody had ever seen them
tremble.

"Do you consider that anything that