Lady Duckle followed her to the front door and stood for a moment to admire the beauty of the morning. The chestnut horses pawed the ground restlessly, excited by the scent of the lilac which a wilful little breeze carried up from Hamilton Place. Every passing hansom was full of flowered silks, and the pale laburnum gold hung in loose tassels out of quaint garden inlets. The verandahed balconies seemed to hang lower than ever, and they were all hung and burdened with flowers. And of all these eighteenth century houses, Evelyn's was the cosiest, and the elder of the two men, who, from the opposite pavement, stood watching the prima donna stroking the quivering nostrils of her almost thoroughbred chestnuts with her white-gloved hand, could easily imagine her in her pretty drawing-room standing beside a cabinet filled with Worcester and old Battersea china, for he knew Owen's taste and was certain the Louis XVI. marble clock would be well chosen, and he would have bet five-and-twenty-pounds that there were some Watteau and Gainsborough drawings on the walls. "Owen is doing the thing well. Those horses must have cost four hundred. I know how much the Boucher drawing cost." "How do you know there is a Boucher drawing?" "Because we bid against each other for it at Christie's. A woman lying on her stomach, drawn very freely, very simply--quite a large drawing--just the thing for such a room as hers is, amid chintz and eighteenth century inlaid or painted tables." "I wonder where she is going. Perhaps to see him." "At ten o'clock in the morning! More likely that she will call at her dressmaker's on her way to rehearsal. She is to sing Elizabeth to-morrow night." And while discussing her singing, the elder man asked himself if he had ever had a mistress that would compare with her. "She isn't by any means a beautiful woman," he said, "but she's the sort of woman that if one did catch on to it would be for a long while." The young man pitied Evelyn's misfortune of so elderly an admirer as Owen. It seemed to him impossible that she could like a man who must be over forty, and the thought saddened him that he might never possess so desirable a mistress. "I wonder of she's faithful to him?" "Faithful to him, after six years of _liaison!_" "But, my dear Frank, we know you don't believe that any woman is straight. How do you know that he is her lover? Very often--" "My dear Cyril, because you meet her at a ball at Lady Ascott's, and because she has lived with that Lady Duckle--an old thing who used to present the daughters of ironmongers at Court for a consideration--above all, because you want her yourself, you are ready to believe anything. I never did meet anyone who could deceive himself with the same ease. Besides, I know all about her. It's quite an extraordinary story." "How did he pick her up?" "I'll tell you presently. She's got into her carriage; we shall be able to see if she rouges as she passes."