"Extremes meet; it's the middle--the medium mediocrity--that's irreconcilable with either end," she retorted. "For instance, I led a life of severe asceticism all last Lent." There were incredulous smiles, though the statement was perfectly correct. "It's a course I could confidently recommend to you," she proceeded, unheeding; "of late you have been putting on flesh with an alarming rapidity." The man made no response and Bella resumed: "Besides, the Puritans have their good points; they're so refreshingly sure of themselves and their views, while the rest of us don't believe in anything. You can't be a fanatic without being thorough, and in renouncing the world and the flesh you may gain more than a passable figure. Among other things, the ascetic life means straight shooting, steady hands, and an eye you can depend upon. The overcivilized man who does nothing to counterbalance his luxuriousness is generally a rotter." "But what has all this to do with Nasmyth's Canadian?" somebody asked. Bella waved her cigarette. "Try to walk a steep moor with him and you'll see. If that's not sufficient, take the same butt with him when the grouse are coming over." Suddenly she straightened herself, dropping her foot from the iron and flinging the cigarette into the fire, as a gray-haired lady entered the hall. She had been a beauty years ago and now her fragility emphasized the fineness of her features and the clear pallor of her skin. She was dressed in a thin black fabric, and her beautifully shaped hands gleamed unusually white against its somber folds. "Where's Clarence?" she asked the group collectively, in a voice that was singularly clear and penetrative. "I haven't seen him for the last half-hour." One of the men immediately went in search of him, and the lady crossed the hall to where Millicent Gladwyne was sitting, for the time being alone. Millicent had noticed Bella's sudden change of demeanor upon her hostess's entrance, with something between amusement and faint disgust. Mrs. Gladwyne was what Bella would have called early-Victorian in her views, and she would occasionally have been disturbed by the conversation of some of her son's guests, had she not been a little deaf. "Sitting quiet?" she said to Millicent, who was a favorite of hers; and her voice carried farther than she was aware of as she continued: "I heard the laughter and it brought me down, though I want to tell Clarence something. I like to see bright faces; but the times have changed since I was young. We were a little more reserved and not so noisy then." "A dear old thing! It's a pity she's quite so antediluvian," Bella remarked to a man at her side. "Isn't that the natural penalty of being a dear old thing?" laughed her companion. "There's no doubt we have progressed pretty rapidly of late."