"Cook is improving in her sharp sauce," Alfred went on cheerfully as he helped himself a second time. "I often think," he continued, "what a lucky thing it is that salmon is a summer fish, it is such a refreshing dish in hot weather." "Yes, I confess I like a bit of salmon myself," said Regina, rather tamely. Julia looked up. Something in her mother's tone struck her as unusual. "Don't you feel well to-day, mother?" she asked. Alfred looked up sharply. "Don't you feel all right?" "Yes, quite all right," she replied; "I think I want to get away." "You're over-doing it," said Alfred in genial yet uneasy tones. "Why don't you take a little rest--not a holiday, but a rest from your outside work? You're over-doing it." "I think so too," said Regina. "I went down to the offices to-day and told them to prepare my resignation as President of the S.R.W." "Mother!" cried Julia in sharp staccato accents. "Oh, come, come, you needn't say 'mother' in that tone. It is the best bit of news I have heard for a long time. My dear, I look toward you--Stay, we'll have a glass of fizz on the strength of it. Margaret, here, take my keys, go down to the cellar, look in bin marked number three and bring up a bottle." "Large or small, sir?" "Oh, a large one." "If you did not like it, Alfred, I wish you had told me before," said Regina, as the door closed behind Margaret. "It isn't that I did not like it, or that I grudged your amusing yourself in your own way, or making your life interests in your own way, but when I see you looking so worn and harried, so pulled down and fagged out--well, I naturally begin to wonder where it is going to end." "I'm getting older," said Regina. "Nonsense, nonsense, fiddle-faddle! we're all getting older, as a matter of fact, but you are still a young woman in the very prime of life. When you have had a good change and a little sea air, when you give yourself a little more ease and a little more personal indulgence, you'll look ten years younger, my dear child, ten years younger." Regina only replied by a smile. At that moment Margaret came back carrying, with the care of a thoroughly well-trained parlor-maid, the bottle of champagne in which they were to drink, as Alfred put it five minutes later, to the degeneration of Mrs. Whittaker. "They'll be very angry, they'll never replace you," he went on, leaning back in his chair and nursing his stomach in the manner peculiar to elderly gentlemen who do not despise their dinner; "I think they ought to give you a diamond star to show their appreciation of the star you have been to them." "I hope not," said Regina, decidedly. "Don't fuss yourself," put in Julia, whose fears for her mother were somewhat allayed; "they won't. I notice that when women give things to women it is generally something they've got cheap. They'll give you an illuminated address, no doubt, and you can frame it and hang it in the hall."