two hours to wait yet, and I'll call you in plenty of time for
you to dress. You don't look altogether yourself, miss. Too much talking
with all that host of callers. You are properly fagged out. I'll get Mrs.
Cooper to beat up an egg for you in a tumbler of hot milk, with a
tablespoonful of sherry and just a pinch of sugar in it. That will get
your circulation right."

CHAPTER VI

SHOWING HOW SIR CHARLES VERITY WAS JUSTIFIED OF HIS LABOURS

Which homely programme being duly executed, worked restorative wonders.
Matter, in the sublimated form of egg-flip, acted upon mind beneficially
through the functions of a healthy, if weary, young body. Our maiden
slept, to dream not of ghostly ponies or other uncomfortably discarnate
creatures; but of Darcy Faircloth in his pretty piece of Quixotism,
rescuing a minister of the Church of England "as by law established" from
heretical baptismal rites of total immersion. The picture had a rough
side to it, and also a merry one; but, beyond these, generous dealing
wholly delightful to her feeling. She awoke soothed and restored, ready
to confront the oncoming of events--whatever their character--in a spirit
of high confidence as well as of resolution.

With the purpose of advertising this brave humour she dressed herself in
her best. I do not deny a love of fine clothes in Damaris. Yet in her own
home, and for delectation of the men belonging to her, a woman is surely
free to deck herself as handsomely as her purse allows. "Beauty
unadorned" ceased to be practicable, in self-respecting circles, with the
expulsion of our first parents from the paradisaic state; while beauty
merely dowdy, is a pouring of contempt on one of God's best gifts to the
human race. Therefore I find no fault with Damaris, upon this rather
fateful evening, in that she clothed herself in a maize-coloured silk
gown flowered in faint amber and faint pink. Cut in the piece from
shoulder to hem, according to a then prevailing fashion, it moulded
bosom, waist and haunches, spreading away into a demi-train behind. The
high Medici collar of old lace, at the back of the square decolletage,
conferred dignity; the hanging lace of the elbow sleeves a lightness. Her
hair, in two wide plaits, bound her head smoothly, save where soft
disobedient little curls, refusing restriction, shaded her forehead and
the nape of her neck.

After a few seconds of silent debate she clasped Carteret's pearls about
her throat again