rnt his
face at the question.

"I hadn't the slightest idea," he protested, indignantly, jerking the
boat into the boathouse.

"But why have you been making love to her so--outrageously?"

She rose and stood balancing herself gracefully while she lit a fresh
cigarette. Her figure was remarkably good.

"Making love to her? I? Nonsense!" he returned, rudely. "She's the
best dancer in the house, and the best sort, all round--those
Warringham girls are frights, and the little Parham thing
is--poisonous."

"But--at breakfast, who fetched her eggs and bacon? Who made her tea?
Who----"

She held out her hand as she spoke, and leaned on him as she got out
of the boat.

"Who got _your_ eggs and bacon, then?" he retorted.

It was the first sounding of the Personal tone, and behind the
cigarette her lips quivered for a fraction of a second.

Then, looking up at him: "Colonel Durrant--a contemporary of my own,
as is right and proper."

"A contemporary--why, the man's old enough to be your father!"

"No." They had left the dusky darkness of the trees, and struck off
across the lawn. "He could hardly be my father, as he's forty-five and
I--thirty!"

Then silence fell, and she knew that he was somewhat tumultuously
readjusting his thoughts. If Mrs. Fraser, who was thirty-four, was in
love with him, then this woman with the sleepy, farseeing eyes, who
was only thirty--what an ass he had been! Just because he had known
Bess Fraser ever since he was a kid, and because Lady Harden was a
great swell, and wore diamond crowns and things, and had a son at
Harrow----

And Lady Harden, apparently dreamily enjoying the exquisite evening,
read his thoughts with the greatest ease, and smiled to herself--the
vague smile that consisted more of a slight, dimpled lift of her upper
lip than of a widening of her mouth.

That evening, by some caprice, she wore no diamonds, and the simplest
of her rather sumptuous gowns.

Colonel Durrant, who had fallen deeply in love with her ten years
before, and never fallen out, whispered to her that she looked twenty.

And as she smiled in answer, her eyes met Teddy Cleeve's.

* * * * *

Mrs. Fraser, quite unconsciously, gave the great Lady Harden all the
information she wanted.

And Lady Harden--her greatness, in several ways, was an undoubted
fact, and the proof of this is that only two people in the world
suspected it--was insatiable in the matter of inform