"Dearest Catherine," she said, "I know it was too awful of me, but, of course, you didn't wait. Everything has been late to-day--at least, I have--and I was late for lunch, and things were amusing, and as I had told my maid to take my traps, and other people were going down to Taplow, I came down with them, and was dropped here. Isn't the country looking too divine! Of course, Thurso came with you. We broke down--you never heard such a bang--and serve me right. Do stop and talk to me for five minutes, because I know you dress like summer lightning. How many maids surround you? Three, is it? What fun it was all last week! You do give your relations and connections a good time. Please wear your smartest to-night--jewels and all. It is so chic to be smart in the country and shabby in London. And it's an old-established custom for you to smoke a cigarette while I am dressing, before it's time for you to dress. There's half an hour yet." Catherine lit a cigarette, and, catching Maud's eye, nodded in the direction of her maid and spoke in French. "Send her away for a few minutes," she said. Maud gave a giggle of laughter. "What a bad language to choose," she said, "because Hortense is French--aren't you, Hortense? Will you go away, please, and come back when her ladyship goes away?" Then Maud turned to her sister-in-law. "Now, Catherine, what is it?" she asked. "Well, first, do be very kind to me, Maud, and take Theodosia away on all possible occasions, so that she gets on Thurso's nerves as little as may be." Maud brought a long plait of hair round her shoulder and held it in her mouth for a moment. "Then I know what you want to talk about," she said. "Theodosia first: I'm on; and afterwards?" "Of course you know. Thurso's nerves. He was fearfully jumpy all the way down. He made efforts, but you don't have to make efforts if you are well, do you? He was rather rude, too, which is so unlike him. He is not rude when he is well. You told me he had bad attacks of neuralgia up in Scotland." "Yes, day after day," said Maud. She paused a moment, wondering whether she had better say that which was on the tip of her tongue. Then she decided to do so. After all, it was her brother's wife to whom she was talking, and the matter was one that clearly concerned her. Even more than that, she was talking to Catherine, to whose wisdom, above that of, perhaps, all others, she felt it natural to confide perplexity or trouble. "He had got to get through the day's work," she said, "and to enable him to do so, to get relief from this horrible pain, he took laudanum, which had been prescribed for him, rather freely. I allow that before the end I was more anxious about that than about his neuralgia. I think he ought to get the limits laid down by a doctor. It can't be right for anybody to take that sort of drug absolutely at his own discretion."