She paused, but if she had a habit of asking disconcerting questions she did not at any rate insist upon answers, and she went on to confess that she believed she would be a happier woman poor than rich--"not that Ben isn't all he should be"--but that then she would have been a fashionable dressmaker. "People want help," she said, "so much more help than they get. They go about with themselves--what was it Mr. Radlett Barns said the other night--oh!--like people leading horses they daren't ride. I think he says such good things at times, don't you? So wonderful to be clever in two ways like that. Just look _now_ at your wife--now I mean, that they've drawn that peacock-coloured curtain behind her. My brother-in-law has been telling me you keep the most wonderful and precious secrets locked up in your breast, that you know how to make gold and diamonds and all sorts of things. If I did,--I should make them." She pounced suddenly upon Rex at her left with questions about the Keltic Renascence, was it still going on--or what? and Trafford was at liberty for a time to enjoy the bright effects about him, the shadowed profile and black hair of Christabel to the right of him, and the coruscating refractions and reflections of Lady Solomonson across the white and silver and ivory and blossom of the table. Then Mrs. Lee dragged him into a sudden conflict with Rex, by saying abruptly-- "Of course, Mr. Trafford wouldn't believe that." He looked perhaps a little lost. "I was telling Mrs. Lee," said Rex, "that I don't believe there's any economy of human toil in machinery whatever. I mean that the machine itself really embodies all the toil it seems to save, toil that went to the making of it and preparing it and getting coal for it...." § 12 Next morning they found their hostess at breakfast in the dining-room and now the sun was streaming through a high triple window that had been curtained overnight, and they looked out through clean, bright plate-glass upon mountains half-dissolved in a luminous mist, and a mist-veiled lake below. Great stone jars upon the terrace bore a blaze of urged and early blossom, and beyond were cypresses. Their hostess presided at one of two round tables, at a side table various breakfast dishes kept warm over spirit lamps, and two men servants dispensed tea and coffee. In the bay of the window was a fruit table, with piled fruit-plates and finger-bowls.