“Mayne, my dear; Dick Mayne, The Uncommercial Traveller, or Patience Rewarded. It would make a nice little modern tract. But the result is admirable as far as Cecily is concerned. I saw her about eighteen months ago. She came up to a lunch-party with Robert. She was positively dowdy, and like the lady--who was it?--who had no more spirit in her. Never saw such a collapse in my life, and every one agreed with me. But now! As pretty as ever--prettier. There’s something different about her, too. I don’t know what it is. Perhaps it’s a touch of dignity about my lady. No, it’s more than that. It’s something a little sphinx-like. Anyhow, it’s a most effective pose. Every one’s talking, of course; but, as I tell them, when the result is so admirable why inquire too closely about the means?” She chuckled a little. Rose looked at her calmly. “Every one’s talking?” she said. “That means what you so aptly describe as ‘this sort of thing.’” She let her eyes wander round the room, which was now filled with chattering women. “Does it matter? Cecily’s friends know as well as you do that what you insinuate is a--is not true.” Lady Wilmot’s expression wavered. She had crossed swords with Rose Summers before, and always found the exercise a little exhausting. Reluctantly she determined to be amicable, so with a laugh she shrugged her shoulders. “Of course, my dear. What a literal mind you have! You know Robert’s got a secretary?” she added, with apparent innocence. “So I hear. Philippa Burton,” returned Rose, with composure. Lady Wilmot’s eyes lit up. “Do you know her?” “I met her long ago in Germany. She was a school-fellow of Cecily’s. I dare say you know that.” There was a pause. Lady Wilmot determined on a new move. “Cecily’s a fool,” she said, gravely,--“that is, if she wants to keep her husband.” She glanced sharply at Rose, who was sipping her tea with exasperating indifference. “She had driven Robert to try reprisals, I suppose.” There was a slight pause, during which Rose took some more tea-cake. “That’s what every one imagines, anyhow,” continued Lady Wilmot, with a distinct access of sharpness. “It’s a dangerous game.” She shook her head as a virtuous matron might have done, and Rose struggled with a smile. “I’ve no patience with wives who allow attractive women to enter their homes under the pretext of work which they ought to be doing themselves,” she concluded, in an exasperated tone, as she glanced at her neighbor’s blank face. “Why on earth doesn’t Cecily act as secretary to her own husband?” “Because she’s writing a novel of her own, and hasn’t time,” said Rose, speaking at last, to give, from Lady Wilmot’s point of view, an utterly valueless piece of information.