Lady Ardingly was, in truth, an astonishing object. Nothing had been done to her; she was, with the exception of certain linen garments, as her Maker had willed she should be. Short and scant gray hair imperfectly covered her head; her face, of a curious gray hue, was arbitrarily intersected by a hundred wrinkles and crow's-feet. "I am in dishabille," she said, rather unnecessarily; "but every old woman is in dishabille. You will get used to it, my dear, some day. So you have come to tell me what every one is saying about Jack's speech. Yes, I am ready for you," she threw over her shoulder to her maid. That functionary took her stand by her mistress and handed the weapons. A powder-puff began the work, followed by an impressionist dusting on of rouge. Lady Ardingly grew beneath the work of her hands. Then a thick crayon of charcoal traced the approximate line where her eyebrows had once been, and a luxuriant auburn wig framed the picture. Mildred, who locked up even from the eyes of her maid such aids as she was accustomed to use, looked on with a sort of shamefacedness. Just as Marie had just now given almost a shock to her instinct of covering up and doing in secret the processes of thought, of showing to the world only the finished and diplomatic product, so Lady Ardingly gave a shock to her body. Each of them--differing by the distance of miles--was alike in this. And the frankness of both was inconceivable to her. Yet both, in their way, possessed calmly and fully what it cost her long effort to catch a semblance of. Neither minded being natural, and both naturally were so. Mildred's naturalness--a rare phenomenon--was the outcome of intense artificiality. "And what is every one saying of Jack's speech?" repeated Lady Ardingly, with one eye closed, regarding with some favour a brilliant patch of rouge on her left cheek. "Or what do you say? You can scarcely yet have heard what people think of it." "Surely he has almost declared himself a Liberal," suggested Mildred. "So the Daily Chronicle said," remarked Lady Ardingly. "What else?" "But, on the other hand, the Cabinet would sooner have such a critic on their side than against them." "Ah, my dear, you have read the Standard too. So have I. Have you not any opinion of your own?" "Yes; he is on the edge of a precipice." Lady Ardingly's decorative hand paused. "And what is the precipice?" she asked. "You have not forgotten our talk, I see." Mildred lost patience a little. "Your advice, you mean," she said.