"How old is she?" Lady Tasker asked. "Thirty-two, isn't she, Katie?" "About that." "Is she very--athletic?" Lady Tasker next wanted to know. "Not at all, I should say." "I mean she doesn't go in for marathon races or Channel swimming or anything of that kind?" "Amory? No," said Dorothy, puzzled. "And you're sure of her age?" the old lady persisted. "Well--she may only be thirty-one." "I don't mean is she younger. Is she _older_ than that?" "No--I know by my own age." "H'm!" said Lady Tasker; and again her needle danced.... Dorothy was explaining to Katie that Mollie was fair, about her own colour, but of course the hair never came out right in a photograph, when Lady Tasker suddenly began a further series of questions. "Dorothy----" "Yes?" "Did she--develop--early?" "Who--Amory? I don't know. Did she, Katie? Of course she was quite the cleverest girl at the McGrath." "Ah!... What did she do at the McGrath?" "Why, painted. You're awfully mysterious, auntie! It was soon after she left the McGrath that she painted 'Barrage'--you've heard of her feminist picture that made such a stir!" "Ah, yes. Yes. I didn't see it, but I did hear about it. I don't know anything about art.--Had she any affair before she married young Pratt?" "No. I'm sure of that. I knew her so well." Dorothy was quite confident on that point, and Katie agreed. Lady Tasker's questions continued. And then, suddenly, into this apparently aimless catechism the word "doctor" came. Dorothy gave a start. "Aunt Grace!... Do you mean Amory's ill?" she cried. Lady Tasker did not look up from her crochet.--"Ill?" she said. "I've no reason to suppose so. I didn't say she was ill. There's no illness about it.... By the way, I don't think I've asked how Stan is." But for the curiously persistent questions, Dorothy might have seized the opportunity to hint that Stan was made for something more nationally useful than getting himself black and blue by stopping runaway horses for the film or running the risk of double pneumonia by being fished out of the sea on a January day--which was the form his bread-winning was taking on that particular week-end. But the Ludlow design was for the moment forgotten. She would have liked to ask her aunt straight out what she really meant, but feared to be rude. So she turned to the album again, and again Katie, turning from turban to staff-cap and from staff-cap to pith helmet, urged that _those_ were the people who really knew what they were talking about--surely Dorothy saw _that_!---- Then, in the middle of Dorothy's bewilderment, once more the questions.... About that painting of her friend's, Lady Tasker wanted to know: did Mrs. Pratt get any real satisfaction out of it?--Any emotional satisfaction?--Was she entirely wrapped up in it?--Or was it just a sort of hitting at the air?--Did it exhaust her to no purpose, or was it really worth something when it was done?---- "If Dorothy doesn't know, surely you do, Katie."