sofas;
and they were designed on broad lines for the stolid, permanent
sitting of stout, comfortable bodies. There were too many photographs
on view of persons distinguished for their solidity rather than for
their good looks, the portraits of the guests whom one would expect
to find installed in those chairs. A grand piano was there; but the
absence of any music in its neighbourhood indicated that its purpose
was chiefly to symbolize harmony in the home life, and to provide a
spacious crush-room for the knick-knacks overflowing from many tables.
These were dominated by a large signed photograph of Queen Victoria.
In front of an open fireplace, where bright logs were crackling, slept
an enormous black cat on a leopard's skin hearthrug.

Out of this sea of easy circumstances rose Lady Cynthia. A daughter
of the famous Earl of Cheviot, hers was a short but not unmajestic
figure, encased in black silks which rustled and showed flashes of
beads and jet in the dancing light of the fire. She had the firm pose
of a man, and a face entirely masculine with strong lips and chin and
humourous grey eyes, the face of a judge.

Miss Gwendolen Cairns, who had apparently been reading to her mother
when the visitors arrived, was a tall girl with fair _cendre_ hair.
The simplicity of the cut of her dress and its pale green color
showed artistic sympathies of the old aesthetic kind. The maintained
amiability of her expression and manner indicated her life's task of
smoothing down feelings ruffled by her mother's asperities, and of
oiling the track of her father's career.

"How are you, my dears?" Lady Cynthia was saying. "I'm so glad you've
come in spite of the tempest. Gwendolen was just reading me to sleep.
Do you ever read to your husband, Mrs. Barrington? It is a good idea,
if only your voice is sufficiently monotonous."

"I hope we haven't interrupted you," murmured Asako, who was rather
alarmed at the great lady's manner.

"It was a shock when I heard the bell ring. I cried out in my
sleep--didn't I, Gwendolen?--and said, 'It's the Beebees!'"

"I'm glad it wasn't as bad as all that," said Geoffrey, coming to his
wife's rescue; "would that have been the worst that could possibly
happen?"

"The very worst," Lady Cynthia answered. "Professor Beebee teaches
something or other to the Japanese, and he and Mrs. Beebee have lived
in Japan for the last forty years. They remind me of that old tortoise
at the Zoo, who has lived at th