er!" I
recalled the poor lady completely now. "No; I shouldn't indeed think it
would be easy to get another. But why is a succession of them necessary
to Lady Beldonald's existence?"

"Can't you guess?" Mrs. Munden looked deep, yet impatient. "They help."

"Help what? Help whom?"

"Why every one. You and me for instance. To do what? Why to think Nina
beautiful. She has them for that purpose; they serve as foils, as
accents serve on syllables, as terms of comparison. They make her 'stand
out.' It's an effect of contrast that must be familiar to you artists;
it's what a woman does when she puts a band of black velvet under a pearl
ornament that may, require, as she thinks, a little showing off."

I wondered. "Do you mean she always has them black?"

"Dear no; I've seen them blue, green, yellow. They may be what they
like, so long as they're always one other thing."

"Hideous?"

Mrs. Munden made a mouth for it. "Hideous is too much to say; she
doesn't really require them as bad as that. But consistently,
cheerfully, loyally plain. It's really a most happy relation. She loves
them for it."

"And for what do they love _her_?"

"Why just for the amiability that they produce in her. Then also for
their 'home.' It's a career for them."

"I see. But if that's the case," I asked, "why are they so difficult to
find?"

"Oh they must be safe; it's all in that: her being able to depend on them
to keep to the terms of the bargain and never have moments of rising--as
even the ugliest woman will now and then (say when she's in
love)--superior to themselves."

I turned it over. "Then if they can't inspire passions the poor things
mayn't even at least feel them?"

"She distinctly deprecates it. That's why such a man as you may be after
all a complication."

I continued to brood. "You're very sure Miss Dadd's ailment isn't an
affection that, being smothered, has struck in?" My joke, however,
wasn't well timed, for I afterwards learned that the unfortunate lady's
state had been, even while I spoke, such as to forbid all hope. The
worst symptoms had appeared; she was destined not to recover; and a week
later I heard from Mrs. Munden that she would in fact "gurgle" no more.

CHAPTER II

All this had been for Lady Beldonald an agitation so great that access to
her apartment was denied for a time even to her sister-in-law. It was
much more out of the question of course that she should unve