"To keep young, of course. There's scope for any amount of ingenuity. Since that dear man in Paris has hit upon the real secret of enamelling, we are thinking of extending the limit to sixty-five. Lily Cestigan is seventy-one, you know, and she told me only last week that Mat Harlowe—you know Harlowe, he's rather a nice boy, in the Guards had asked her to run away with him. She's known him three months, and he's seen her at least three times by daylight. She's delighted about it."
"And is she going?" Arranmore asked.
"Well, I'm not sure that she'd care to risk that," Lady Caroom answered, thoughtfully. "She told him she'd think about it, and, meanwhile, he's just as devoted as ever."
They crossed the great stone hall together—the hall which, with its wonderful pillars and carved dome, made Enton the show-house of the county. Arranmore's study was a small octagonal room leading out from the library. A fire of cedar logs was burning in an open grate, and he wheeled up an easy-chair for her close to his writing-table.
"I wonder," she remarked, thoughtfully, "what you think of Syd
Molyneux?"
"Is there anything—to be thought about him?" he answered, lighting a cigarette.
"He's rather that way, isn't he?" she assented. "I mean for Sybil, you know."
"I should let Sybil decide," he answered.
"She probably will," Lady Caroom said. "Still, she's horribly bored at having to be dragged about to places, you know, and that sort of thing, just because she isn't married, and she likes Syd all right. He's no fool!"
"I suppose not," Arranmore answered. "He's of a type, you know, which has sprung up during my—absence from civilization. You want to grow up with it to appreciate it properly. I don't think he's good enough for Sybil."