beat fast, and she had thought, "Can it be he?" Each day, after the
words "Sir Seymour Portman!" her heart had sunk and she had felt bitter
and weary.

And now came this invitation, putting it in her power to meet Craven
again naturally. Should she go?

She read Dindie Ackroyde's note once more carefully, and a strange
feeling stung her. She had been angry with Beryl for being fond of
Craven. (For she had supposed a real fondness in Beryl.) Now she was
angry with Beryl for a totally different reason. It was evident to her
that Beryl was behaving badly to Craven. As she looked at the note in
her hand she remembered a conversation in a box at the theatre. Arabian!
That was the name of the man Dick Garstin was painting, or had
been painting. Dindie Ackroyde called him "Something Arabian." Lady
Sellingworth's mind supplied the other name. It was Nicolas. Beryl had
described him as "a living bronze."

She had gone out to tea with him in a flat on the day her father's
sudden death had been announced in the papers. And yet she had pretended
that she was hovering on the verge of love for Alick Craven. She had
even implied that she was thinking of marrying him. Lady Sellingworth
saw Beryl as a treacherous lover, as well as an unkind friend and a
heartless daughter, and suddenly her anger against Craven died in pity.
She had believed for a little while that she hated him, but now she
longed to protect him from pain, to comfort him, to make him happy,
as surely she had once made him happy, if only for an hour or two. She
forgot her pride and her sense of injury in a sudden rush of feeling
that was new to her, that perhaps, really, had something of motherliness
in it. And she sat down quickly and wrote an acceptance to Mrs.
Ackroyde.

When Sunday came she felt excited and eager, absurdly so for a woman
of sixty. But her secret diffidence troubled her. She looked into her
mirror and thought of the piercing eyes of the "old guard," of those
merciless and horribly intelligent women who had marked with amazement
her sudden collapse into old age ten years ago, who would mark with a
perhaps even greater amazement this bizarre attempt at a partial return
towards what she had once been.

And what would Alick Craven think?

Nevertheless she put a little more red on her lips, called her maid, had
something done to her hair.

"It has been a great success!" said the little Frenchwoman. "Miladi
looks wonderful to-day. Black and white i