Lady Aspasia Melbury was a handsome woman of the "horsey" type. A favourite, even in royal circles, her praise ran in men’s mouths expressively as "a real good sort." A woman kind to others, with the ease afforded her by splendid health, unlimited means, and an assured position. Modern to the very last minute, frank beyond the point of offence, she might be cited as one of those rare beings to whom life is almost an absolute success; the more safely, perhaps, because most of her ideals (if ideals they could be called) were of the most practical description. Yet life had failed Lady Aspasia upon one point—she had had one unsatisfied desire; her youth had held a brief romance, interrupted by a _mariage de raison_; and when her millionaire had left her free, she had looked, with the confidence of her nature, to the instant renewal of the broken idyll. But here it was that fate had played its single scurvy trick upon the woman. Arthur Gerardine, the once handsome, penniless lad, the now still handsome, distinguished man, who had remained bachelor all these years (she had fondly hoped for her sake), had married—a year after her own widowhood—married, not the ready Lady Aspasia, but a poor unknown widow out in India. Lady Aspasia’s solitary unrealised ideal, then, was Sir Arthur Gerardine. In what strange nests will not some ideals perch! And unattainable it seemed likely to remain. As she now stood, her large, bold eyes roaming quizzically round the faded room—which seemed to hold her ultra-modern presence with amazement, to echo her loud laugh with a kind of protest, like a simple dame of olden times raising mittened hands of rebuke—no one would have guessed that she was inwardly eaten with impatience to behold her rival, to know at last the creature who had supplanted her. "It is, indeed, a poor little place," said Sir Arthur, bustling forward to advance a chair. "I had no idea it was such a tumble-down old house. We must get rid of it as soon as possible." "Ah, but pardon!" interposed Dr. Châtelard. "It is old if you will, Sir Gerardine, but thereby it is rich. Nowhere else have I so felt the unpurchasable riches of past time. I am charmed to have come here. After your gorgeous Melbury, the piquancy of this antique abode of gentility is to me delicious!" "Ah, well," said Sir Arthur, magnificently, "I don’t say it has not got a sort of picturesqueness and all that, but it’s not what we are accustomed to in England, you know. Comfort, Châtelard, the land of comfort, we say. You don’t know what it is in your country. But in the good old days—people did not understand it either, here, you see. Look at that chair, now. As hard as nails, eh, Lady Aspasia? I dare say a collector or somebody might like it. What do you say—Chippendale, eh? Elizabethan? Well, it’s all the same thing. It’s not my sort, anyhow. I shall sell it all, bag and baggage."