ath.

Ten years ago she had lost her husband, in the year following most of
her capital had gone in a mad-cat speculation, and three years later
her gallant brother-in-law died, leaving her a yearly income sufficient
for expenses and education if she would undertake to mother his little
daughter. Since then she had led the usual abortive life of the woman
who lives on the past glamour of her husband's success and a limited
income, upon which she tries ineffectually to dovetail herself into a
society to which she does not rightly belong. Having noticed an
increasing plenitude of silver among the ash-gold of her hair, a
deepening of the lines of discord between her brows, and the threads of
discontent which were daily being hemstitched into her face by the
sharp needles of make-believe, covetousness, and a precarious banking
account, she had recently decided to try and annex, or rather try and
graft herself on to a certain unsuspecting male being _en secondes
noces_.

And that simply cannot be done if there is the slightest shadow upon
one's appendages.

So she sat down in the chair with as good a grace as she could muster,
and arranged her big picture hat so that the spring sun should not draw
Sir Jonathan's attention to the methods she employed to combat the
rapidity with which what remained of her prettiness, prematurely faded
by the Indian sun, was vanishing.

For a long and trying moment he sat silently staring at her, wondering
as he had always wondered what had induced his old friend to place his
little girl in such inadequate, feeble hands.

To break the tension Lady Hetth clanked a silver Indian bracelet bought
at Liberty's against an Egyptian chain sold by Swan & Edgar's, and the
man frowned as he drew a series of cats on his blotting-paper.

CHAPTER III

"Against stupidity the very gods
Themselves contend in vain!"--_Schiller_.

"Let me see," he said slowly. "You have been in India I believe. I
wonder if you know anything about it!"

"I lived _ten_ years in the Punjab." This information was given with
the intense self-satisfaction peculiar to the feminine Anglo-Indian.
"With my husband," was added after a rather damping silence, "who was
knighted for certain--er--work he did in the Indian Civil Service."

"That doesn't mean that you know anything about the country, Mam.
Leonie has been with you almost seven years, please correct me if I
make any mistake. She is seven this month yo