"For ordinary dressing purposes, I need not have gone in until seven; and now I must lose this last, perfect hour." "What happens?" asked Jane. "I know nothing of the process." "I can't go into details," replied Lady Ingleby, "but you know how sweet I have looked all day? Well, if I did not go to my maid now, I should look less sweet by the end of dinner, and at the close of the evening I should appear ten years older." "You would always look sweet," said Jane, with frank sincerity; "and why mind looking the age you are?" "My dear, 'a man is as old as he feels; a woman is as old as she looks,'" quoted Myra. "I FEEL just seven," said Garth. "And you LOOK seventeen," laughed Myra. "And I AM twenty-seven," retorted Garth; "so the duchess should not call me 'a ridiculous child.' And, dear lady, if curtailing this mysterious process is going to make you one whit less lovely to-night, I do beseech you to hasten to your maid, or you will spoil my whole evening. I shall burst into tears at dinner, and the duchess hates scenes, as you very well know!" Lady Ingleby flapped him with her garden hat as she passed. "Be quiet, you ridiculous child!" she said. "You had no business to listen to what I was saying to Jane. You shall paint me this autumn. And after that I will give up facial massage, and go abroad, and come back quite old." She flung this last threat over her shoulder as she trailed away across the lawn. "How lovely she is!" commented Garth, gazing after her. "How much of that was true, do you suppose, Miss Champion?" "I have not the slightest idea," replied Jane. "I am completely ignorant on the subject of facial massage." "Not much, I should think," continued Garth, "or she would not have told us."