" And with a queer
little smile she pointed to a strapping red-faced youth dancing with her
daughter. "He nearly trips Bee up every minute, and he hugs her so, as
if he were afraid of falling on his head. Oh, dear, what a bump! It's
lucky she's so nice and solid. I like to see the dear boy. Here come
George and Helen Bellew. Poor George is not quite up to her form, but
he's better than most of them. Doesn't she look lovely this evening?"

Lady Maiden raised her glasses to her eyes by the aid of a
tortoise-shell handle.

"Yes, but she's one of those women you never can look at without seeing
that she has a--a--body. She's too-too--d'you see what I mean? It's
almost--almost like a Frenchwoman!"

Mrs. Bellew had passed so close that the skirt of her seagreen dress
brushed their feet with a swish, and a scent as of a flower-bed was
wafted from it. Mrs. Pendyce wrinkled her nose.

"Much nicer. Her figure's so delicious," she said.

Lady Maiden pondered.

"She's a dangerous woman. James quite agrees with me."

Mrs. Pendyce raised her eyebrows; there was a touch of scorn in that
gentle gesture.

"She's a very distant cousin of mine," she said. "Her father was quite a
wonderful man. It's an old Devonshire family. The Cheritons of Bovey are
mentioned in Twisdom. I like young people to enjoy themselves."

A smile illumined softly the fine wrinkles round her eyes. Beneath
her lavender satin bodice, with strips of black velvet banding it at
intervals, her heart was beating faster than usual. She was thinking
of a night in her youth, when her old playfellow, young Trefane of the
Blues, danced with her nearly all the evening, and of how at her window
she saw the sun rise, and gently wept because she was married to Horace
Pendyce.

"I always feel sorry for a woman who can dance as she does. I should
have liked to have got some men from town, but Horace will only have
the county people. It's not fair to the girls. It isn't so much
their dancing, as their conversation--all about the first meet,
and yesterday's cubbing, and to-morrow's covert-shooting, and their
fox-terriers (though I'm awfully fond of the dear dogs), and then that
new golf course. Really, it's quite distressing to me at times." Again
Mrs. Pendyce looked out into the room with her patient smile, and two
little lines of wrinkles formed across her forehead between the regular
arching of her eyebrows that were still dark-brown. "They don't seem
able to be gay.