‘No, you are not quite bad-looking, Delicia, but you have one horrible defect—you have got what is called an “expressive” face. That is a mistake! You should not have any expression; it is “bad form” to look interested, surprised, or indignant. A beautiful nullity is what men like—a nullity of face combined with a nullity of brain. You should paint and powder and blacken your eyelashes, and you should also be ready to show your ankles, “by accident,” if necessary. The men would find you charming then, Delicia; they would say you had “go” in you; but to be simply a student, with ideas of your own about the world in general, and to write down these ideas in books, which give you a fame and position equal to the fame and position of a man,—this makes you a bore in their eyes, Delicia!—an unmitigated nuisance, and they wish you were well out of their way! If you could only have been a “Living Picture” at the Palace Theatre, or turned out your arms and twiddled your toes in front of the footlights with as few garments on as possible, you would have been voted “clever,” Delicia! But being a successful rival with men in the struggle for fame, they vent their spite by calling you a fool. And you are a fool, my dear, to have ever married one of them!’ Smiling at herself disdainfully, she gathered up her fan and gloves, and descended to her carriage. No message had come from Carlyon to say whether or no he meant to be present at the party that evening; but his wife had attained to such an appreciable height of cool self-control, that she now viewed the matter with complete indifference. Arrived at Lord Dexter’s stately house in Park Lane, she went to the ladies’ room to throw off her wraps, and there found, all alone, and standing well in front of the long mirror, so as to completely block the view for anyone else, a brilliant-looking, painted personage in a pale-green costume, glittering with silver, who glanced up as she entered and surveyed her pearl embroideries with greedy admiration. ‘What an awfully sweet gown!’ she burst out frankly. ‘I always say what I think, though I am told it is rude. It’s awfully sweet! I should like just such a one to dance in!’ Delicia looked at her in a haughty silence. The other woman laughed. ‘I suppose you think it pretty cool of me making remarks on your clothes,’ she said; ‘but I’m a “celebrity,” you see, and I always say what I like and do what I like. I’m Violet de Gascon;—_you_ know!—the “Marina.”’ Frozen into a rigid state of calm, Delicia loosened her lace wrappings with chilly fingers, and allowed the servant in attendance to take them from her. ‘Are you?’ she then said, slowly and bitterly, ‘I congratulate you! As you have given me your name, I may as well give you mine. I am Lady Carlyon.’