r, or her ancestors, must have been able to exercise
over hundreds of gifted painters, cabinet-makers, needlewomen, potters,
braziers, carvers, metal-workers, and craftsmen of all kinds for
generations.

It was late in June in the ninth year of King Edward VII's reign--that
halcyon period when nobody who was anybody felt particularly happy,
because no such person had actually experienced what unhappiness was.
Certainly Mrs. Delarayne had not, unless she had shown really
exceptional fortitude and self-control over her husband's death.

A sound in the room suddenly made her turn her head, and she dropped her
book gently into the folds of her dress.

"My dear child," she exclaimed, addressing her elder daughter, "are you
still there? I thought you had gone long ago! I must have been asleep."

"You did sleep, Edith dear," her daughter replied, "because I heard you
snoring. You only picked up your book a moment ago."

Mrs. Delarayne examined her own blue-veined knotty hands with the
expression of one who is contemplating a phenomenon that is threatening
to become a nuisance, and then dropping them quickly out of sight again,
she glanced eagerly round the room as if she wished to forget all about
them. She did not relish her daughter's allusion to her
snoring,--another sign of the same depressing kind as her blue-veined
knotty hands,--and her next remark was made with what seemed unnecessary
anger.

"Instead of wasting your time here, Cleo," she observed, picking up her
book again, "why don't you go upstairs and pull some of those nasty
black hairs off your upper lip? You know who's coming to-day, and you
also know that young men, in this country at any rate, strongly object
to any signs of temperament in a girl. They think it incompatible with
their ideal of the angel, or the fairy, or some other nonsense."

Cleopatra rose, jerked her shoulders impatiently, and snorted.

"I should have thought it better to be natural," she blurted out. "If
it's natural for me to have dark hairs on my upper lip, then surely I
should not remove them."

Again Mrs. Delarayne dropped her book and glanced round very angrily.
"Don't be stupid, Cleo!" she cried. "What do you suppose 'natural' means
nowadays? Has it any meaning at all? Is it natural for you to blow your
nose in a lace handkerchief? Is it natural for you to do your hair up?
Is it natural for you to eat marrons glaces as you do at the rate of a
pound and a half a week,--yes,