a pound and a half a week; I buy them so
I ought to know, unless the servants get at them--when you ought to be
living in a cave, dressed in bearskins and gnawing at the roots of
trees? Don't talk to me about 'natural.' Nothing is natural nowadays,
except perhaps the inexhaustible stupidity of people who choke over a
little process of beautification and yet swallow the whole complicated
artificiality of modern life."

As Mrs. Delarayne turned her refined and still very beautiful face to
the light, it became clear that she at any rate did not choke over any
"little process of beautification"; for she was at least fifty-five
years of age, and at a distance of two or three yards, looked thirty.

Cleopatra moved mutinously towards the door.

"That's right, my dear," said her mother in more conciliatory tones. "I
don't mind your upper lip; I like it. But then I understand. Denis does
not understand, and I'm convinced that he doesn't like it."

Flushing slightly, Cleopatra turned to face her mother. "Edith dear, how
can you talk such nonsense!" she exclaimed. "What do I care whether
Denis likes it or not?"

Mrs. Delarayne smiled. "Well, I do, my dear. When you are my age you'll
be as anxious as I am to get your daughters married."

The younger woman turned her head. "Married!" she cried. "Oh when shall
I hear the end of that litany! I suppose you want me to marry anybody,
it doesn't matter whom, so long as I----"

"H'm," grunted the parent. "I don't think the discussion of that
particular point would prove profitable."

Cleopatra sailed haughtily out of the room, and there was just the
suggestion of an angry slam in the way she closed the door after her.

She was now twenty-five years of age. "Much too old," was the mother's
comment. "It must be this year or never." She was a good-looking girl,
dark, with large intelligent eyes, a pretty, straight nose, and full
well-shaped lips. About five foot six in height, she was also well
developed. Certainly her colouring was not quite all that it might have
been; but she was naturally a little anaemic, as all decent girls should
be who, at twenty-five years of age, are still unmarried. "It seems
absurd," thought her mother, "that such a creature should have had to
wait so long." And then with an effort she turned her thoughts to less
depressing matters.

Mrs. Delarayne was a widow. Her late husband, a wealthy, retired
Canadian lawyer, had been dead four years, having left h