"Rum creatures, women," soliloquised the philosopher, sauntering to his club. "If you gave 'em the solar system to play with they'd howl for the universe," which was a high flight for Jim to take in the way of metaphor. Leah sometimes thought that the long period of mourning might have darkened her outlook on life. She and Jim were forced by a ridiculously particular world to live quietly, and she could not indulge herself to the full. A constant succession of black dresses palled on one fond of colours, and custom forbade her filling the various ducal residences with amusing people, who in any case were almost impossible to find. Then, as Leah stated, they were really poor, considering the title. What with regiments of servants and the stately mansions which housed them, the horses and carriages, and motors, and rents and taxes, and unnecessary personal expenditure, and equally unnecessary charities, it was truly difficult to make two aristocratic ends meet. The Duchess of Pentland had to contrive and arrange almost as much as had Lady Jim. From two thousand a year to twenty-five times that amount seems a large jump, but the title nullified the value of the estates. Leah ardently prayed that the fetish would increase the incoming and decrease the outgoing, but her Baal seemed to think that it had done enough, even for so devout a woman. "Am I never going to have a good time?" wailed Leah. Later she found that the wail was unnecessary, for the fetish pitied his worshipper and granted her prayer. Coal of the best quality was found on a Welsh property of the Kaimes family, and Hall prophesied that in a year or two the ducal income would be doubled. Leah took heart at this sign of grace, as one really could manage pretty well on one hundred thousand a year. But a pound a minute was Leah's idea of a moderate income, and then she would have grumbled that each hour only brought her in sixty sovereigns. However, she decided to spend what she had and what was coming along from the coal to the last farthing, and arranged when the year of sorrow was ended--as it now was--to take her place in the very gayest of society. She would be presented again this season according to custom, and then would see about exhausting the most advanced pleasures of a civilisation that could not do enough for one of her greedy appetite. This she told to Lady Canvey. "That is a mistake," rejoined the sagacious octogenarian, who was a year older in body and a year younger in brain. "If you exhaust everything in this world, nothing will be left for you but to try the next. And I don't think you are quite prepared for that, my dear." "Perhaps not. I never set up for being a saint." "No. That is a pleasure you have not yet exhausted. Why not try it?" "Because I am no hypocrite. What is the use of pretending to be goody-goody, when you are not?" "Saints are holy, not goody-goody." "It's the same thing."