"I shouldn't mind that so much," said the elder lady, grasping eagerly at this introduction to an analysis of the learned man. "I had better blurt it all out, May. Well--he knows nothing about women----" Lady Dashwood spoke with angry emphasis, but in a whisper. "Ah!" said Mrs. Dashwood, and now she stared deeply at one particular block of wood that was spitting quietly at the attacking flames. She raised her arm and laid her hand on her aunt Lena's shoulder. Then she squeezed the shoulder slightly as if to gently squeeze out a little more information. "Jim is--I'm not sure--but I'm suspicious--on the verge of getting into a mess," said her aunt still in a low voice. "Ah!" said May again. "With some woman?" "All perfectly proper," said Lady Dashwood, "but--oh, May--it's so unspeakably dreary and desolating." "Much older than he is?" asked May softly, with an emphasis on "much." "Very much younger," said Lady Dashwood. "Only eighteen!" "Not nice then?" asked May again softly. "Not anything--except pretty--and"--here Lady Dashwood had a strident bitterness in her voice--"and--she has a mother." "Ah!" said May. "You know Lady Belinda Scott?" asked Lady Dashwood. May Dashwood moved her head in assent. "Not having enough money for everything one wants is the root of all evil?" she said imitating somebody. "Belinda exactly! And all that you and I believe worth having in life--is no more to her--than to--to a monkey up a tree!" Mrs. Dashwood spoke thoughtfully. "We've come from monkeys and Lady Belinda thinks a great deal of her ancestry." "Then you understand why I'm anxious? You can imagine----" May moved her head in response, and then she suddenly turned her face towards her aunt and said in the same voice in which she had imitated Belinda before-- "If dull people like to be dull, it's no credit to 'em!" Lady Dashwood laughed, but it was a hard bitter laugh. "Oh, May, you understand. Well, for the twenty-four hours that Belinda was here, she was on her best behaviour. You see, she had plans! You know her habit of sponging for weeks on people--she finds herself appreciated by the 'Nouveaux Riches.' Her title appeals to them. Well, Belinda has never made a home for her one child--not she!" Mrs. Dashwood's lips moved. "Poor child!" she said softly, and there was something in her voice that made Lady Dashwood aware of what she had momentarily forgotten in her excitement, that the arm resting on her shoulder was the arm of a woman not yet thirty, whose home had suddenly vanished. It had been riddled with bullets and left to die at the retreat from Mons. Lady Dashwood fell into a sudden silence. "Go on, dear Aunt Lena," said May Dashwood.