nted arches were glassy and haggard, the carnation lips had
a withered look. Age was made all the more palpable by the artifice
which would have disguised it.

Lady Maulevrier suffered an absolute shock at beholding the friend of
her youth. She had not accustomed herself to the idea that women in
society could raddle their cheeks, stain their lips, and play tricks
before high heaven with their eyebrows and eyelashes. In her own youth
painted faces had been the ghastly privilege of a class of womankind of
which the women of society were supposed to know nothing. Persons who
showed their ankles and rouged their cheeks were to be seen of an
afternoon in Bond Street; but Lady Diana Angersthorpe had been taught to
pass them by as if she saw them not, to behold without seeing these
creatures outside the pale. And now she saw her own dearest friend, a
person distinctly within the pale, plastered with bismuth and stained
with carmine, and wearing hair of a colour so obviously false and
inharmonious, that child-like faith could hardly accept it as reality.
Forty years ago Lady Kirkbank's long ringlets had been darkest glossiest
brown, to-day she wore a tousled fringe of bright yellow, piquantly
contrasting with Vandyke brown eyebrows.

It took Lady Maulevrier some moments to get over the shock. She drew a
chair to the fire and established her friend in it, and then, with a
little gasp, she said:

'I am charmed to see you again, Georgie!'

'You darling, I was sure you would be glad. But you must find me awfully
changed--awfully.'

For worlds Lady Maulevrier could not have denied this truth. Happily
Lady Kirkbank did not wait for an answer.

'Society is so wearing, and George and I never seem to get an interval
of quiet. Kirkbank is to be full of men next week. Your granddaughter
will have a good time.'

'There will be a few women, of course?'

'Oh, yes, there's no avoiding that; only one doesn't reckon them. Sir
George only counts his guns. We expect a splendid season. I shall send
you some birds of my own shooting.'

'You shoot!' exclaimed Lady Maulevrier, amazed.

'Shoot! I should think I do. What else is there to amuse one in
Scotland, after the salmon fishing is over? I have never missed a season
for the last thirty years, unless we have been abroad.'

'Please, don't innoculate Lesbia with your love of sport.'

'What! you wouldn't like her to shoot? Well, perhaps you are right. It
is hardly the thing for a pret