And Bruce was more genuinely impressed and unconsciously bored by Madame Frabelle than by any woman he had ever met. Yet she was not at all extraordinary. She was a tall woman of about fifty, well bred without being distinguished, who could never have been handsome but was graceful, dignified, and pleasing. She was neither dark nor fair. She had a broad, good-natured face, and a pale, clear complexion. She was inclined to be fat; not locally, in the manner of a pincushion, but with the generally diffused plumpness described in shops as stock size. She was not the sort of modern woman of fifty, with a thin figure and a good deal of rouge, who looks young from the back when dancing or walking, and talks volubly and confidentially of her young men. She had, of course, nothing of the middle-aged woman of the past, who at her age would have been definitely on the shelf, doing wool-work or collecting recipes there. Nor did she resemble the strong-minded type in perpetual tailor-made clothes, with short grey hair and eye-glasses, who belongs to clubs and talks chiefly of the franchise. Madame Frabelle was soft, womanly, amiable, yet extremely outspoken, very firm, and inclined to lay down the law. She was certainly charming, as Bruce and Edith agreed every day (even now, when they were beginning to wonder when she was going away!). She had an extraordinary amount of personal magnetism, since she convinced both the Ottleys, as she had convinced Lady Conroy, that she was wonderfully clever: in fact, that she knew everything. A fortnight had passed, and Edith was beginning to grow doubtful. Was she so clever? Did she know everything? Did she know anything at all? Long arguments, that grew quite heated and excited at luncheon or dinner, about the origin of a word, the author of a book, and various debatable questions of the kind, invariably ended, after reference to a dictionary or an encyclopaedia, in Madame Frabelle proving herself, with an air of triumph, to be completely and entirely wrong. She was as generally positive as she was fatally mistaken. Yet so intense a belief had she in her intuition as well as in her own inaccurate information that her hypnotised hosts were growing daily more and more under her thumb. She took it for granted that everyone would take her for granted--and everyone did. Was all this agreeable or otherwise? Edith thought it must be, or how could they bear it at all? If it had not been extremely pleasant it would have been simply impossible. The fair, gentle, pretty Edith, who was more subtle than she appeared on the surface, while apparently indolent, had a very active brain. Madame Frabelle caused her to use it more than she had ever done before. Edith was intensely curious and until she understood her visitor she could not rest satisfied. She made her a psychological study.