'You are annoyed as it is; at least, I meant you to be. It's no use arguing about it, because we really differ, and you cannot argue unless you fundamentally agree, which we do not. I'm in the minority, I know; almost everybody agrees with you. But I am old-fashioned; I have been told so this evening.' 'By----' 'Yes, by Sybil Massington. She, too, agrees with you.' There was silence for a minute or two. 'It's two years since her husband died, is it not?' asked Bertie. 'Yes, two years and one month. I know what you are thinking about. I asked her--at least, she saw what I meant--again this evening, but I have asked her for the last time. I suppose it is that--my feeling for her--that to-night makes me think what a horrible cold-blooded proceeding you are going to embark on. I can't help it; I do feel like that. So there's an end of it.' Bertie did not reply, and a clock on the chimney-piece chimed two. 'There's one more thing,' he said at length. 'You advised me to brush up the coronet. Did you mean anything?' Charlie took out his watch, and began winding it up. Mechanically, Bertie took his coat on his arm. 'Yes, I meant exactly what you think I meant.' 'It's rather awkward,' said Bertie. 'She's going out to America in the autumn to act. I am certain to meet her in New York; at any rate, she is certain to know I am there.' 'Will that really be awkward?' asked Charlie. 'Is she--is she?' 'I haven't seen her for nearly two years,' said the other. 'I don't know whether she hates me or the other thing. In either case, I am rather afraid.' Mrs. Massington also had spent the hour after she had got home in midnight conference. Since her husband's death, two years ago, she had lived with an unmarried sister of her own, a woman some ten years older than herself, yet still on the intelligent side of forty, and if she herself had rightly earned the title of the prettiest widow in London, to Judy, even more unquestionably, belonged the reputation of the wisest spinster in the same village. She was charmingly ugly, and relished the great distinction that real ugliness, as opposed to plainness, confers on its possessor. She was, moreover, far too wise ever to care about saying clever things, and thus there were numbers of people who could never imagine why she was so widely considered a gifted woman. To Sybil Massington she was a sort of reference in all questions that troubled her--a referee always to be listened to with respect, generally to be agreed with, but in all cases to be treated with entire frankness, for the very simple reason that Judy invariably found you out, if you concealed any part of the truth, or had been in any degree, when consulting her, what Mrs. Massington preferred to call diplomatic.