ty girl with her fortune to make. It
spoils the delicacy of the skin. But I'm afraid she'll find Kirkbank
dull if she doesn't go out with the guns. She can meet us with the rest
of the women at luncheon. We have some capital picnic luncheons on the
moor, I can assure you.'

'I know she will enjoy herself with you. She has been accustomed to a
very quiet life here.'

'It is a lovely spot; but I own I cannot understand how you can have
lived here exclusively during all these years--you who used to be all
life and fire, loving change, action, political and diplomatic society,
to dance upon the crest of the wave, as it were. Your whole nature must
have suffered some curious change.'

Their close intimacy of the past warranted freedom of speech in the
present.

'My nature did undergo a change, and a severe one,' answered Lady
Maulevrier, gloomily.

'It was that horrid--and I daresay unfortunate scandal about his
lordship; and then the sad shock of his death,' murmured Lady Kirkbank,
sympathetically. 'Most women, with your youth and beauty, would have
forgotten the scandal and the husband in a twelvemonth, and would have
made a second marriage more brilliant than the first. But no Indian
widow who ever performed suttee was more worthy of praise than you, or
even that person of Ephesus, whose story I have heard somewhere. Indeed,
I have always spoken of your life as a long suttee. But you mean to
re-appear in society next season, I hope, when you present your
granddaughter?'

'I shall certainly go up to London to present her, and possibly I may
spend the season in town; but I shall feel like Rip Van Winkle.'

'No, no, you won't, my dear Di. You have kept yourself _au courant_, I
know. Even my silly gossiping letters may have been of _some_ use.'

'They have been most valuable. Let me give you another cup of tea,' said
Lady Maulevrier, who had been officiating at her own exquisite
tea-table, an arrangement of inlaid woods, antique silver, and modern
china, which her friend pronounced a perfect poem.

Indeed, the whole room was poetic, Lady Kirkbank declared, and there are
many highly praised scenes which less deserve the epithet. The dark red
walls and cedar dado, the stamped velvet curtains, of an indescribable
shade between silver-grey and olive, the Sheraton furniture, the
parqueterie floor and Persian prayer-rugs, the deep yet brilliant hues
of crackle porcelain and Chinese cloisonne enamel, the artistic
firepla