er. How
do you manage it?"

That come in October?

These words struck a chill through Lady Sellingworth. Suddenly she felt
the autumn in her. She had been in America: she had known the glory of
its Indian summer; she had also known that Indian summer's startling
sudden collapse. Winter comes swiftly after those almost unnaturally
golden days. And what is there left in winter for a woman who has lived
for her beauty since she was sixteen years old? The freedom of a second
widowhood would be only chill loneliness in winter. She saw herself like
a figure in the distance, sitting over a fire alone. But little warmth
would come from that fire. The warmth that was necessary to her came
from quite other sources than coal or wood kindled and giving out
flames.

Her vanity shuddered. She realized strongly, perhaps, for the first
time, that people were just beginning to think of her as a woman
inevitably on the wane. She looked into her mirror, stared into it,
and tried to consider herself impartially. She was certainly very
good-looking. Her tall figure had never been made ugly by fatness. She
was not the victim of what is sometimes called "the elderly spread." But
although she was slim, considering her great height, she thought that
she discerned signs of a thickening tendency. She must take that in
time. Her figure must not be allowed to degenerate. And her face?

She was so accustomed to her face, and so accustomed to its being a
beautiful face, that it was difficult to her to regard it with cold
impartiality. But she tried to; tried to look at it as she might have
looked at the face of another woman, of say, a rival beauty.

What age did the face seem to be? If she had seen it passing by in the
street what age would she have guessed its owner to be? Something in
the thirties; but perhaps in the late thirties? She wasn't quite
certain about it. Really it is so difficult to look at yourself quite
impartially. And she did not wish to fall into exaggeration, to be
hypercritical. She wished to be strictly reasonable, to see herself
exactly as she was. The eyes were brilliant, but did they look like
young eyes?

No, they didn't. And yet they were full of light. There was nothing
faded about them. But somehow at that moment they looked terribly
experienced. With a conscious effort she tried to change their
expression, to make them look less full of knowledge. But it seemed to
her that she failed utterly. No, they were not y