Miss Delafield bowed, laughed, and moved toward the door.

She left the room, and behind her an impression of breeziness and health, of English girlhood and a certain bright cheerfulness which acts as a filter in social muddy waters.
"It is very good of you to come--I was moping," said Mrs.Sydney Bamborough.

She was, as a matter of fact, resting before the work of the evening.

This lady thoroughly understood the art of being beautiful.
Paul did not answer at once.

He was looking at a large photograph which stood in a frame on the mantelpiece--the photograph of a handsome man of twenty-eight or thirty, small-featured, fair, and shifty looking.
"Who is that ?" he asked abruptly.
"Do you not know?
My husband." Paul muttered an apology, but he did not turn away from the photograph.
"Oh, never mind," said Mrs.Sydney Bamborough, in reply to his regret that he had stumbled upon a painful subject.