It was no wonder if underneath the cleverness of her Greek she aged rapidly, more rapidly than was natural in a woman of her years. For she had piled effort on effort. She had been young for Rupert Louth until she had been physically exhausted; and then she had been old for him until she was mentally exhausted. The hardy Amazon had been forced to change in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, into the calm and middle-aged adviser of hot passioned youth, into the steady unselfish confidante, into the breaker of untoward news to the venerable parent--in fact, into Mother Hubbard, as Lady Sellingworth more than once desperately told herself. “Mother Hubbard! Mother Hubbard! I’m just Mother Hubbard to him and to that horrible girl!” And she saw herself as Mother Hubbard, a “dame.” And she alone knew how absolutely bare her cupboard was at that time. But she struggled on magnificently, taking no rest; she faced the “old guard” with splendid courage, in fact with such courage that most of them pretended to be deceived, and perhaps--for is not everything possible in this life?--perhaps two or three of them really were deceived. The Duchess of Wellingborough said often at this time: “Addie Sellingworth has the stuff in her of a leader of forlorn hopes!” Lord Blyston paid up for “the Crouch,” once Willoughby, who had now left the Alhambra disconsolate. He paid up by selling the only estate he still possessed, and letting his one remaining country house to an extraordinarily vulgar manufacturer from the Midlands, who did not know a Turner from a Velasquez until he was told. And for the time “the Crouch” was as satisfied as a woman of her type can ever be. Time passed on. Lady Sellingworth went about everywhere with a smiling carefully-made-up face and a heart full of dust and ashes. But even then she could not make up her mind finally to abandon all pretence of youth, all hope of youth’s distractions, pleasures, even joys. She had a terribly obstinate nature, it seemed, a terribly strong lust after life. Even her imp could not lash her into acceptance of the inevitable, could not drive her with his thongs of irony into the dignity which only comes when the human being knows how to give up, and when. But what the imp could not achieve was eventually achieved by a man, whose name Lady Sellingworth did not know. This was how it happened.