Among places of amusement it was always _her_ choice that prevailed; Will has a weakness for these _revues_--"you can at least smoke there," he says--; Phyllida seemed to have developed into a remorseless blue-stocking. By day she wore him out at exhibitions... When he was not cooling his heels in a shop... At night he was expected to stay up till all hours to bring her home from dances. And so forth and so on... Perhaps she tried us all rather hard. Money seemed to _melt_ in her hands; and, though I did not grudge her my last penny if it was going to turn her thoughts, I am not ashamed to confess that I have reached an age where I set great store by my personal comfort. When you have lived for thirty years under the same vine and fig-tree, you begin to regard your home as a frame and setting which you are not too anxious to share with any one; hitherto my guests, when any have done me the honour to make my house their own, have recognized that the hostess _has_ the first claim on their consideration. Not so Phyllida, who seems to have been brought up in a very different school. She was _ruthless_ in her unpunctuality at meals and in her general disregard of every one else's convenience; plans were chopped and changed up to the last moment, and there were times when I felt that she was deliberately making everything as difficult as possible--almost as though the absurd old feud had not been forgotten and I had put myself at her mercy. More than anything else I felt the loss of the car. They used it so unmercifully that I hourly expected the man to give notice; and in the meantime poor Aunt Ann was left to go by taxi--when she could find one. I ought never to have lent it? My dear, you are preaching to the converted, but I have a reason different from yours. I was standing helplessly outside Covent Garden one night, when a taxi providentially drove up and I got into it. Only when I was half-way home did I remember that I had not told the man where to take me. Laugh, if you will; but I have never been so frightened! The wildest stories of kidnapping and robbery surged into my head. I was wearing my tiara, and the man had made a bee-line for me... Yet we were driving the shortest way to Mount Street, and the mystery was not explained until the man--with delightful and most unexpected civility--jumped down from the box, opened the door and stood cap in hand, waiting to help me out. Almost as though one had been Royalty... "You have forgotten me, Lady Ann?," he asked.