to her immense capacity for ignoring. In her way, she lived the
glorious life of fantasy, lapped in the freshest and most beautiful
illusions. Not but what she saw through every one of them, her own and
other people's; for Lady Cayley's intelligence was marvellously subtle
and astute. But the fierce will by which she accomplished her desires
urged her intelligence to reject and to destroy whatever consideration
was hostile to the illusion. It was thus that she had achieved
respectability.

But respectability accomplished had lost all the charm of its young
appeal to the imagination; and it was not agreeing very well with Lady
Cayley just at present. The sight of Majendie revived in her memories of
the happy past.

"Mr. Majendie, why have I not met you here before?"

Some instinct told her that if she wished him to approve of her, she must
approach him with respect. He had grown terribly unapproachable with
time.

He smiled in spite of himself. "We did meet, more than three years ago."

"I remember." Lady Cayley's face shone with the illumination of her
memory. "So we did. Just after you were married?"

She paused discreetly. "You haven't brought Mrs. Majendie with you?"

"N--no--er--she isn't very well. She doesn't go out much at night."

"Indeed? I _did_ hear, didn't I, that you had a little--" She paused, if
anything, more discreetly than before.

"A little girl. Yes. That history is a year old now."

"Wallie!" cried Mrs. Hannay, "it's a year and three months. And a darling
she is, too."

"I'm sure she is," said Sarah in the softest voice imaginable. There was
another pause, the discreetest of them all. "Is she like Mr. Majendie?"

"No, she's like her mother." Mrs. Hannay was instantly transported with
the blessed vision of Peggy. "She's got blue, blue eyes, Sarah; and the
dearest little goldy ducks' tails curling over the nape of her neck."

Majendie's sad face brightened under praise of Peggy.

"Sweet," murmured Sarah. "I love them when they're like that." She saw
how she could flatter him. If he loved to talk about the baby, _she_
could talk about babies till all was blue. They talked for more than half
an hour. It was the prettiest, most innocent conversation in which Sarah
had ever taken part.

When Majendie had left (he seldom kept it up later than ten o'clock), she
turned to Mrs. Hannay.

"What's the matter with him?" said she. "He looks awful."

"He's married the wrong woman, my dear. That'