At which, accountably to Lady Whyteleafe, Mrs. Freddy blushed and stumbled in this particular 'speech.'

'I know, I know,' she said, carrying it off with an air of comic contrition. 'I even said, "There's a modesty in nature that it isn't wise to overstep" (I'd forgotten some people think speech-making comes under that head). "It's been realized," I said—yes, rushing on my doom!—"it's been realized up to now only in the usual one-sided way—discouraging boys from marrying women old enough to be their mothers. But dear, blundering, fatuous man"'—she smiled into her husband's pleasantly mocking face—'"he thinks," I said, "at any age he's a fit mate for a fresh young creature in her teens. If they only knew—the dreadful old ogres!" Yes, I said that. I piled it on—oh, I stuck at nothing! "The men think an ugly old woman monopolizes all the opportunities humanity offers for repulsiveness. But there's nothing on the face of the earth as hideous," I said, "as an ugly old man. Doesn't it stand to reason? He's bound to go greater lengths than any woman can aspire to. There's more of him to be ugly, isn't there? I appealed to them—everything about him is bigger, coarser—he's much less human," says I, "and much more like a dreadful old monkey." I raised my wretched eyes, and there, not three feet away, was the aged husband of the Fox-Moore woman ogling Hermione Heriot! Oh, let me die!' Mrs. Freddy leaned against the blue-grey sofa for a moment and half closed her pretty eyes. The next instant she was running gaily across the room to welcome Richard Farnborough and Captain Beeching.

'I always know,' said Lord Borrodaile, glancing over the banisters as he and Vida went down—'I always know the kind of party it's going to be when I see—certain people. Don't you?'

'I know who you mean,' Vida whispered back, her eyes on Mrs. Graham Townley's aggressively high-piled hair towering over the bald pate of the minister, as, side by side, they disappeared through the dining-room door. 'Why does Laura have her?'

'Well, she's immensely intelligent, they say,' he sighed.

'That's why I wonder,' laughed Vida. 'We are rather frivolous, I'm afraid.'

'To tell the truth, I wondered, too. I even sounded my sister-in-law.'

'Well?'

'She said it was her Day of Reckoning. "I never ask the woman," she said, "except to a scratch party like this."'