, but no
man with even a prospective interest in a pretty woman, likes to think
of the object of his admiration as thoroughly well able to look after
herself. She must needs have a protector, and the heaven-sent one is
himself.

He had to take up arms in her defense on this, the first night of his
arrival. Mrs. Loring had gone up to her room for some photographs of
her house in America, and as she flitted through the door her scarf
caught on the knob, and he had been obliged to extricate it. He had
known her exactly four hours, and although he was unconscious of it,
his heart was being pulled along the passage and up the stairway at
the tail-end of that wisp of chiffon, while he listened to her
retreating footsteps. Closing the door he came back to Mrs. de Tracy's
side.

"Her dress is indecorous for a widow," said that lady severely.

"Oh, I don't see that," replied Lavendar. "She is in reality only a
girl, and her widowhood has already lasted two years, you say."

"Once a widow always a widow," returned Mrs. de Tracy sententiously,
with a self-respecting glance at her own cap and the half-dozen dull
jet ornaments she affected. Lavendar laughed outright, but she rather
liked his laughter: it made her think herself witty. Once he had told
her she was "delicious," and she had never forgotten it.

"That's going pretty far, my dear lady," he replied. "Not all women
are so faithful to a memory as you. I understand Americans don't wear
weeds, and to me her blue cape is a delightful note in the landscape.
Her dresses are conventional and proper, and I fancy she cannot
express herself without a bit of colour."

"The object of clothing, Mark, is to cover and to protect yourself,
not to express yourself," said Mrs. de Tracy bitingly.

"The thought of wearing anything bright always makes me shrink,"
remarked Miss Smeardon, who had never apparently observed the tip of
her own nose, "but some persons are less sensitive on these points
than others."

Mrs. de Tracy bowed an approving assent to this. "A widow's only
concern should be to refrain from attracting notice," she said, as
though quoting from a private book of proverbial philosophy soon to be
published.

"Then Mrs. Loring might as well have burned herself on her husband's
funeral pyre, Hindoo fashion!" argued Lavendar. "A woman's life hasn't
ended at two and twenty. It's hardly begun, and I fear the lady in
question will arouse attention whatever she wears."

"Wo