ages to get back all
that's been taken out in her acting. Young America's crazy about her.
She's going to play over here."

"Oh!"

Lady Holme's voice was not encouraging, but Mrs. Wolfstein was not
sensitive. She chattered gaily all the way to the Haymarket. When they
came into the Palm Court they found Lady Cardington already there,
seated tragically in an armchair, and looking like a weary empress.
The band was playing on the balcony just outside the glass wall which
divides the great dining-room from the court, and several people were
dotted about waiting for friends, or simply killing time by indulging
curiosity. Among them was a large, broad-shouldered young man, with
a round face, contemptuous blue eyes and a mouth with chubby, pouting
lips. He was well dressed, but there was a touch of horseyness in the
cut of his trousers, the arrangement of his tie. He sat close to the
band, tipping his green chair backwards and smoking a cigarette.

As Mrs. Wolfstein and Lady Holme went up to greet Lady Cardington, Sally
Perceval and Mrs. Trent came in together, followed almost immediately by
Lady Manby.

Sally Perceval was a very pretty young married woman, who spent most
of her time racing, gambling and going to house parties. She looked
excessively fragile and consumptive, but had lived hard and never had
a day's illness in her life. She was accomplished, not at all
intellectual, clever at games, a fine horsewoman and an excellent
swimmer. She had been all over the world with her husband, who was very
handsome and almost idiotic, and who could not have told you what
the Taj was, whether Thebes was in Egypt or India, or what was the
difference, if any, between the Golden Gate and the Golden Horn.
Mrs. Trent was large, sultry, well-informed and supercilious; had the
lustrous eyes of a Spaniard, and spoke in a warm contralto voice. Her
figure was magnificent, and she prided herself on having a masculine
intellect. Her enemies said that she had a more than masculine temper.

Lady Manby had been presented by Providence with a face like a teapot,
her nose being the spout and her cheeks the bulging sides. She saw
everything in caricature. If war were spoken of, her imagination
immediately conjured up visions of unwashed majors conspicuously absurd
in toeless boots, of fat colonels forced to make merry on dead rats,
of field-marshals surprised by the enemy in their nightshirts, and of
common soldiers driven to repair their ow