"She's grown as prim as a parlor-maid," said Lonsdale to Sylvia when, after lunch, they had a chance of talking together. "You ought to have seen her on the ancestral acres. My mother, who presides over our place like a Queen Turnip, is without importance beside Dolly, absolutely without importance. It got on Tony's nerves, that's about the truth of it. He never could stand the land. It has the same effect on him as the sea has on some people. Black vomit, coma, and death--what?" "Dorothy, of course, played the countess in real life as seriously as she would have played her on the stage. She was the star," Sylvia said. "Star! My dear girl, she was a comet. And the dowager loved her. They used to drive round in a barouche and administer gruel to the village without anesthetics." "I suppose they kept them for Clarehaven," Sylvia laughed. "That's it. Of course, I shouted when I saw the state of affairs, having first of all been called in to recover old Lady Clarehaven's reason when she heard that her only child was going to wed a Vanity girl. But they loved her. Every frump in the county adored her. It's Tony who insisted on this move to London. He stood it in Devonshire for two and a half years, but the lights of the wicked city--soft music, please--called him, and they've come back. Dolly's fed up to the wide about it. I say, we are a pair of gossips. What's your news?" "I met Maurice Avery, in Morocco." "What, Mossy Avery! Not really? Disguised as a slipper, I suppose. Rum bird. He got awfully keen on a little girl at the Orient and tootled her all over town for a while, but I haven't seen him for months. I used to know him rather well at the 'Varsity: he was one of the esthetic push. I say, what's become of Lily?" "Married to a croupier? Not, really. By Jove! what a time I had over her with Michael Fane's people. His sister, an awfully good sort, put me through a fearful catechism." "His sister?" repeated Sylvia. "You know what Michael's doing now? Greatest scream on earth. He's a monk. Some special kind of a monk that sounds like omelette, but isn't. Nothing to be done about it. I buzzed down to see him last year, and he was awfully fed up. I asked him if he couldn't stop monking for a bit and come out for a spin on my new forty-five Shooting Star. He wasn't in uniform, so there's no reason why he shouldn't have come." "He's in England, now, then?" Sylvia asked. "No, he got fed up with everybody buzzing down to see what he looked like as a monk, and he's gone off to Chartreuse or Benedictine or somewhere--I know it's the name of a liqueur--somewhere abroad. I wanted him to become a partner in our business, and promised we'd put a jolly little runabout on the market called The Jovial Monk, but he wouldn't. Look here, we'd better join the others. Dolly's got her eye on me. I say," he chuckled, in a whisper, "I suppose you know she's a connection of mine?" "Yes, by carriage."