When she had wandered languidly round the three or four tables on which jewel cases, gold, silver, china, and tortoise-shell things were spread, she propped her own black-edged card conspicuously in front of a Sevres-framed mirror, and bent down for a hasty peep at her face in its oval. She wondered if her hair were a tiny touch too red. She liked it, herself, and thought the heart-shaped white face, with its wide-apart black eyes set in that copper halo, a siren face. In the weeds of a war-widow it seemed to her that she was almost irresistible, but she could not help realizing that there were people who did resist her. The Duke was one. And an attractive cousin of Juliet's, John Manners, was another. She was vaguely aware that her own taste was decidedly vivid. Perhaps the hair _was_ rather red! She had had it "bobbed" since Juliet came to London, because it worried her that Juliet should look years younger than she. No one would take Lady West for twenty-seven, but she had been an "old girl" and Juliet a "new girl," the year they met at school. Juliet was twenty-three now, and she, Emmy, had gone back to twenty-five. One had to be that, if one had married before the war! Quickly she dusted on a little powder from her vanity box, and accentuated the cupid's bow of her lips with a stick of red salve, for it was possible that Claremanagh might "breeze in." It would be like him! This thought was still in her mind when a door behind her opened. She turned nervously, tucking the lip-salve into her gold mesh bag, for just now the Duke was having a craze for baby complexions without make-up. But it was not the Duke. It was a girl, standing in the doorway between bedroom and salon. "Hello, Emmy!" she said. "Hello, Juliet!" said Emmy. And suddenly she felt years older than she had felt a moment ago. Juliet Phayre was such a big baby! The girl wore a pale pink chiffon thing which she probably considered a dressing gown. It was embroidered with wild roses and banded with swansdown, and no practical person would have dreamed of keeping it on for a shampoo. Juliet, however, thought herself sufficiently protected with a towel over her shoulders--a silvery damask towel under which her bare, girlish arms hung down. Over the towel streamed masses of hair in long, wet strands, which must be bright golden-brown when dry. These fell--weighted with water--nearly to her knees, and from their curly ends drops poured like unstrung pearls. She was so tall and slender, and brilliant rose-and-white, that she would have looked to a poet like Undine just out of her fountain. "You extravagant thing," Lady West scolded, "to spoil a lovely boudoir gown like that!" "Simone gets it to-morrow as a perquisite, with all my old things," Juliet dismissed the subject. "She said you'd been here an age, so I thought I'd better come in. I'll dry my hair before the fire, presently we'll have tea."