"I don't like to give myself away before a butler," Susie said, as the door closed on the last of the silk stockings. "Footmen are non-existent: one doesn't stop to consider whether they are matter, or only electricity; but a butler is a person and can think--perhaps a socialistic satirist, seething with silent scorn for his mistress and her friends." "And no doubt an esteemed contributor to one of the Society Papers," said Claude. "I am not afraid of Democracy, nor the English adaptation of the French Revolution, though I feel sure it is coming," continued Lady Susan, planting her elbow on the table in an expansive mood. "I am afraid of nothing except growing old. That one terror swallows up all trivial fears. They might take my money, they might steep me in poverty to the lips, and if I could keep youth and good looks, I should hardly mind." Again she looked at the others appealingly, like a child that is afraid of Red Riding-hood's wolf. "Age is such a hideous disease--the one incurable malady. And we must all have it. We are all growing old; even you, Vera, though you have not begun to think about it. I didn't till I was thirty. As we sit at this table and laugh and amuse ourselves, the sands are falling, falling, falling--they never stop! Glad or sorry, that horrible disease goes on, till the symptoms suddenly become acute--grey hair, wrinkles, gout." "But are there not some mild pleasures left in the years that bring the philosophic mind?" asked Claude. "Does that mean when one is eighty? At eighty one might easily be philosophic. Everything would be over and done with. One would be like old Lord Tyrawly, who said he was dead, though people did not know it." "Some of the most delightful people I have known were old, and even very old," said Claude, "but they didn't mind. That's the secret of eternal youth, my dear Susie--not to mind: to wear the best wig you can buy, and not to pretend it is your own hair: to wear pretty clothes, especially suited to your years, sumptuous velvet and more sumptuous fur, like a portrait of an old lady by Velasquez: never to brag of your age, but never to be ashamed of it. The last phase may be the best phase, if one has the philosophic mind." "Oh, you," exclaimed Susan scornfully, "you are like Chesterfield. You will have your good manners till your last death-bed visitor has been given a chair. A fine manner is the only thing that time can't touch." Vera saw her aunt looking bored, and smiled the signal for moving. "Half a cigarette, and I shall follow," said Claude, as he opened the door for the trio, "unless I am distinctly forbidden."