“Yes. She looked very handsome in the photograph. Of course, it was tremendously touched up. Still, it gave me a real idea of what she must once have been. But, oh! how she has changed!”
“Naturally!”
“I mean in expression. In the photograph she looks vain, imperious. Do you know how a woman looks who is always on the watch for new lovers?”
“Well—yes, I think perhaps I do.”
“Lady Sellingworth in the photograph has that on the pounce expression.”
“That’s rather awful, isn’t it?”
“Yes; because, of course, one can see she isn’t really at all young. It’s only a fausse jeunesse after all, but still very effective. The gap between the woman of the photograph and the woman of 18A Berkeley Square is as the gulf between Dives and Lazarus. I shouldn’t have loved her then. But perhaps—perhaps a man might have thought he did. I mean in the real way of a man—perhaps.”
Craven did not inquire what Miss Van Tuyn meant exactly by that. Instead, he asked:
“And did these ladies of the ‘old guard’ speak kindly of the white-haired traitress?”
“They were careful. But I gathered that Lady Sellingworth had been for years and years one of those who go on their way chanting, ‘Let us eat, drink and be merry, for to-morrow we die.’ I gathered, too, that her efforts were chiefly concentrated on translating into appropriate action the third ‘let us.’ But that no doubt was for the sake of her figure and face. Lady Archie said that the motto of Lady Sellingworth’s life at that period was ‘after me the deluge,’ and that she had so dinned it into the ears of her friends that when she let her hair grow white they all instinctively put up umbrellas.”