“Good. How d’ye do, Duchess?”--and Harold, before he disappeared, greeted with a rapid concentration of all the shades of familiarity a large high lady, the visitor he had announced, who rose in the doorway with the manner of a person used to arriving on thresholds very much as people arrive at stations--with the expectation of being “met.” II “Good-bye. He’s off,” Mrs. Brookenham, who had remained quite on her own side of the room, explained to her friend. “Where’s he off to?” this friend enquired with a casual advance and a look not so much at her hostess as at the cushions just rearranged. “Oh to some places. To Brander to-day.” “How he does run about!” And the Duchess, still with a glance hither and yon, sank upon the sofa to which she had made her way unaided. Mrs. Brookenham knew perfectly the meaning of this glance: she had but three or four comparatively good pieces, whereas the Duchess, rich with the spoils of Italy, had but three or four comparatively bad. This was the relation, as between intimate friends, that the Duchess visibly preferred, and it was quite groundless, in Buckingham Crescent, ever to enter the drawing-room with an expression suspicious of disloyalty. The Duchess was a woman who so cultivated her passions that she would have regarded it as disloyal to introduce there a new piece of furniture in an underhand way--that is without a full appeal to herself, the highest authority, and the consequent bestowal of opportunity to nip the mistake in the bud. Mrs. Brookenham had repeatedly asked herself where in the world she might have found the money to be disloyal. The Duchess’s standard was of a height--! It matched for that matter her other elements, which were wontedly conspicuous as usual as she sat there suggestive of early tea. She always suggested tea before the hour, and her friend always, but with so different a wistfulness, rang for it. “Who’s to be at Brander?” she asked. “I haven’t the least idea--he didn’t tell me. But they’ve always a lot of people.” “Oh I know--extraordinary mixtures. Has he been there before?” Mrs. Brookenham thought. “Oh yes--if I remember--more than once. In fact her note--which he showed me, but which only mentioned ‘some friends’--was a sort of appeal on the ground of something or other that had happened the last time.” The Duchess dealt with it. “She writes the most extraordinary notes.” “Well, this was nice, I thought,” Mrs. Brookenham said--“from a woman of her age and her immense position to so young a man.” Again the Duchess reflected. “My dear, she’s not an American and she’s not on the stage. Aren’t those what you call positions in this country? And she’s also not a hundred.” “Yes, but Harold’s a mere baby.” “Then he doesn’t seem to want for nurses!” the Duchess replied. She smiled at her hostess. “Your children are like their mother--they’re eternally young.” “Well, I’M not a hundred!” moaned Mrs. Brookenham as if she wished with dim perversity she were.