“Dora, if she wants to, can be a little demon,” amplified Cynthia frankly. “Well, Laura is a worse edition of Dora, that’s all. Apart, they’re demons, but together they’re positively diabolical. I warn you.” “Query,” Guy murmured, “when is a demon not diabolical? When it’s apart.” “And when should a purist cease to be pure?” smiled Cynthia. “In his wife’s bedroom, I should have thought, at least.” “Mrs. Nesbitt, you shock me,” Guy cackled in high glee. Cynthia’s occasional lapses into pleasant vulgarity he privately considered one of the most delightful things about her. He uncurled his length from the chair. “Well, thank you for warning me. I’ll be on my guard against this diabolical pair. Let us hope that the presence of her fiancé will be a restraining influence upon Dora’s demoniacal tendencies.” “What a lot of long words my husband does know,” confided Cynthia to her hair-brush. “Where are you off to now? They’re not due for another twenty minutes.” “I must see about the wine,” Guy replied reverently, and retired. Wine and his wife were about the only two things in this world which Guy really respected. Chapter II. From Cocktails to Criminology It has been said, no doubt with truth, that to make her mark in these overcrowded days a girl must adopt a line and stick to it like grim death. She may be languid, she may be sporting, she may be offensively rude, she may be appealing and doll-like, and she will find success, but she must never be purely and simply herself; that is the fundamental mistake. Such criticism could not be applied to the Misses Howard. Our semi-civilised conventions have their disadvantages. In a more enlightened age the Misses Howard might have been compelled to go through life wearing horns and a barbed tail and a passable imitation of cloven hooves, as a timely warning to unsuspecting strangers not to take these two innocent-looking maidens at their face-value, charming as that was. Dissimulation, as practised by the Misses Howard, was more than a fine art; it was a hobby. The unsuspecting stranger (of the male sex, of course; female strangers are never unsuspecting, and the more strange they are the more they suspect), catching sight of one of the Miss Howards would swell his manly chest and pat his manly back, and say to himself in his manly tones: “Here is a poor, frightened little thing who looks at me as if I were a god. Who knows? Perhaps I am a god. I am very much inclined, when this helpless and pretty little thing looks at me like that, to think that I am. Out with the lance and armour! Are there any dragons about? Or, failing dragons, mice? At any rate, it is palpably up to me to protect this delectably timid small person from something, and that pretty quickly.”