deep into her eyes, and as he did so she seemed deliberately
to make them more profound so that he might not touch bottom.

"It's difficult to think of an after you," he said.

"But there will be, I suppose, some day when the Prince of Wales wears
a grey beard and goes abroad in the winter to escape bronchial troubles.
Oh, dear! What a brute Time is!"

She tried to look pathetic, and succeeded better than Craven had
expected.

"I shall put up my _en tout cas_ then," said Craven very seriously.

Still looking pathetic, she allowed her eyes to stray to a neighbouring
mirror, waited for a moment, then smiled.

"Time's a brute, but there's still plenty of him for me," she said. "And
for you, too."

"He isn't half so unpleasant to men as to women," said Craven. "He makes
a very unfair distinction between the sexes."

"Naturally--because he's a man."

"What did Lady Wrackley say?" asked Craven, returning to their subject.

"Why do you ask specially what she said?"

"Because she has a reputation, a bad one, for speaking her mind."

"She certainly was the least guarded of the 'old guard.' But she said
she loved Lady Sellingworth now, because she was so changed."

"Physically, I suppose."

"She didn't say that. She said morally."

"That wasn't stupid of her."

"Just what I thought. She said a moral revolution had taken place in
Lady Sellingworth after the jewels were stolen."

"That sounds almost too tumultuous to be comfortable."

"Like 'A Tale of Two Cities' happening in one's interior."

"And what did she attribute such a phenomenon to?"

"Well, she took almost a clerical view of the matter."

"How very unexpected!"

"She said she believed that Adela--she called her Adela--that Adela took
the loss of her jewels as a punishment for her sins."

"Do you mean to say she used the word sins?"

"No; she said 'many lapses.' But that's what she meant."

"Lapses from what?"

"She didn't exactly say. But I'm afraid she meant from a strict moral
code."

"Oh, Lord!" said Craven, thinking of Lady Wrackley's smile.

"Why do you say that?"

"Please--never mind! So Lady Wrackley thinks that Lady Sellingworth
considered the loss of her jewels such a fitting punishment for her many
lapses from a strict moral code that she never tried to get them back?"

"Apparently. She said that Addie--she called her Addie then--that Addie
bowed her head."

"Not beneath the rod! Don't tell me she used the word rod!"

"