Eighteen years lay between the events which Lady Bracondale recalled so hazily and the Mrs. Romayne who crossed the threshold of Mrs. Pomeroy’s drawing-room as the footman spoke her name. Those eighteen years had changed her at once curiously more and curiously less than the years between six-and-twenty and four-and-forty usually change a woman. She looked at the first glance very little older than she had done eighteen years ago; younger, indeed, than she had looked during those early days of her widowhood. Such changes as time had made in her appearance seemed mainly due to the immense difference in the styles of dress now obtaining. The dainty colouring, the cut of her frock, the pose of her bonnet, the arrangement of her hair, with its fluffy curls, all seemed to accentuate her prettiness and to bring out the youthfulness which a little woman without strongly marked features may keep for so long. The fluffy hair was a red-brown now, instead of a pale yellow, and the change was becoming, although it helped greatly, though very subtly, to alter the character of her face. The outline of her features was perhaps a trifle sharper than it had been, and there were sundry lines about the mouth and eyes when it was in repose. But these were obliterated, as a rule, by a characteristic to which all the minor changes in her seemed to have more or less direct reference; a characteristic which seemed to make the very similarity between the woman of to-day and the woman of eighteen years before, seem unreal; the singular brightness and vivacity of her expression. Her features were animated, eager, almost restless; her gestures and movements were alert and quick; her voice, as she spoke to an acquaintance here and there, as she moved up Mrs. Pomeroy’s drawing-room, was brisk and laughing. Her dress and demeanour were the dress and demeanour of the day to the subtlest shade; she had been a typical woman of the world eighteen years before; she was a typical woman of the world now. But in the old days the personality of the woman had been dominated by and merged in the type. Now the type seemed to be penetrated by something from within, which was not to be wholly suppressed. She came quickly down the long drawing-room, smiling and nodding as she came, and greeted Mrs. Pomeroy with a little exaggerated gesture of despair and apology. “Have you really finished?” she cried. “Is everything settled? How shocking of me!” Then, as she shook hands with Mrs. Halse, she added, with a sweetness of tone which seemed to cover an underlying tendency which was not sweet: “However, we have such a host in our secretary that really one voice more or less makes very little difference.” “Well, really, I don’t know that we have settled anything!” said Mrs. Pomeroy. “We have talked things over, you know. It is such a mistake to be in a hurry! Don’t you think so?”