“Ah, there is Adela Sellingworth!” said Braybrooke. Miss Van Tuyn turned quickly, with a charming, youthful grace, made up of a suppleness and litheness which suggested almost the movement of a fluid. Craven noted it with a little thrill of unexpected pleasure, against which an instant later something in him rebelled. “Where is she?” said Miss Van Tuyn. “She’s just gone into the ladies’ cloak-room,” answered Braybrooke. “But not to powder her face!” said Miss Van Tuyn. “She keeps us waiting, like the great prima donna in a concert, just long enough to give a touch of excitement to her appearance. Dear Lady Sellingworth! She has a wonderful knowledge of just how to do things. That only comes out of a vast experience.” “Or--don’t you think that kind of thing may be instinctive?” said Craven. She sought his eyes with a sort of soft hardihood which was very alluring. “Women are not half as instinctive as men think them,” she said. “I’ll tell you a little secret. They calculate more than a senior wrangler does.” “Now you are maligning yourself,” he said, smiling. “No. For I haven’t quite got to the age of calculation yet.” “Oh--I see.” “Here she comes!” said Braybrooke. And he went towards the door, leaving “our young friends” for a moment. “But what has she done to herself?” said Miss Van Tuyn. “Done! Lady Sellingworth?” “Yes. Or is it only her hair?” Craven wondered, too, as Lady Sellingworth joined them, accompanied by her host. For there was surely some slight, and yet definite, change in her appearance. She looked, he thought, younger, brighter, more vivid than she generally looked. Her white hair certainly was arranged differently from the way he was now accustomed to. It seemed thicker; there seemed to be more of it than usual. It looked more alive, too, and it marked in, he thought, an exquisite way the beautiful shape of her head. A black riband was cleverly entangled in it, and a big diamond shone upon the riband in front above her white forehead, weary with the years, but uncommonly expressive. She wore black as usual, and had another broad black riband round her throat with a fine diamond broach fastened to it. Her gown was slightly open at the front. There were magnificent diamond earrings in her ears. They made Craven think of the jewels stolen long ago at the station in Paris. This evening the whiteness of her hair seemed wonderful, as the whiteness of thickly powdered hair sometimes seems. And her eyes beneath it were amazingly vivid, startlingly alive in their glancing brightness. They looked careless and laughingly self-possessed as she came up to greet the girl and young man, matching delightfully her careless and self-possessed movement. At that moment Craven realized, as he had certainly never realized before, what a beauty--in his mind he said what a “stunning beauty”--Lady Sellingworth must once have been. Even her face seemed to him in some way altered to-night, though he could not have told how.