Life had not shattered her illusions as it had those of her husband, because--even in her young days--she had so few to shatter. She had always been one of those clear-sighted people who see things pretty much as they are. But she too had her disappointments and her unsatisfied yearnings. The Coronation peerage was ordained by an inscrutable Providence to remain merely a life-peerage. There were no children to fill their mother's large heart, and (incidentally) to carry on their father's well-earned honours. As soon as Isabel had greeted her hostess, she came straight across the paved court to me with outstretched hands. "My dear Reggie, how delightful to see you again! I had no idea you were here. And you've been and got married and done no end of foolish things since I saw you last, and I know you are dying to tell me all about them, just as I am dying to hear." "Of course I am; and it is more than delightful to meet again in this unexpected fashion," I responded; "I had no idea you were here, either." "Well, we aren't really," she replied, sitting down on the chair next to the one from which I had just risen to greet her, and which I at once resumed, for fear somebody should come between us. "We've taken a cottage here to which we rush for weary weekends, and return to town like giants refreshed: and we only came down to-day. And now tell me all about your wife. I hear she is younger than anybody ever was before, and much more beautiful, and I am simply expiring with curiosity to see her." "I shall be only too pleased to introduce her to you, Lady Chayford." Isabel gave a little scream. "Oh, for mercy's sake, don't call me by that absurd name: it makes me feel like a relic of an effete civilisation. Of the multitudes that once called me _Isabel_ there are only a few survivors left, and I beseech them to continue the habit, or else my Christian name will be forgotten as completely as the Christian name of the Sphinx. And now let me see if I can guess which is your wife," she went on, casting her blue eyes over the various groups dotted about the garden. "I think it must be that fairy-like sylph in green: there is nobody else here who in the least answers to the description I have heard." "You've hit the right nail on the head as usual," I replied: "that is Fay." "Oh, Reggie, how lovely she is! And how clever it was of you to discover anybody so exquisite! Very few men do." "But they all think that they do: which comes to the same thing as far as they are concerned."