the new
identity that came over them on those occasions was so described by her
ladyship remained a secret; and, so far as we know, remains a secret
still. But that was the expression she made use of more than once in
conversation with her daughter.

If her statements about herself were worthy of credence, her tastes were
Arcadian, and the satisfactions incidental to her position as a
Countess--wealth and position, with all the world at her feet, and a
most docile husband, ready to make any reasonable, and many
unreasonable, sacrifices to idols of her selection--were the merest
drops on the surface of Life's crucible. What her soul really longed for
was a modest competence of two or three thousand a year, with a not too
ostentatious house in town, say in Portland Place; or even in one of
those terraces near the Colosseum in Regent's Park, with a sweet little
place in Devonshire to go to and get away from the noise, concocted from
specifications from the poets, with a special clause about clotted cream
and new-laid eggs. Something of that sort! Then she would be able to
turn her mind to some elevating employment which it would be premature
to dwell on in detail to furnish a mere castle-in-the-air, but of which
particulars would be forthcoming in due course. Or rather, would have
been forthcoming. For now the die was cast, and a soul that could have
been pastorally satisfied with a lot of the humble type indicated, had
been caught in a whirl, or entangled in a mesh, or involved in a
complication--whichever you like--of Extravagance, or Worldliness, or
Society, or Mammon-worship, or Plutocracy, or Pactolus--or all the
lot--and there was an end of the matter!

"All I can say is that I wonder you do it. I do indeed, mamma!" Thus
Gwen, a week later in the story, in her bedroom at the very top of the
house, which had once been a smoking-room and which it was her young
ladyship's caprice to inhabit, because it looked straight over the Park
towards the Palace, which still in those days was close to Kensington,
its godmother. The Palace is there still, but Kensington is gone. Look
about for it in the neighbourhood, if you have the heart to do so, and
see if this is a lie. You will find residential flats, and you will find
Barker's, and you will find Derry's, and you will find Toms's. But you
will _not_ find Kensington.

"You may wonder, Gwen! But if ever you are a married woman with an
unmarried grown-up daughter in England an