She was large and handsome, sixty, perhaps, and her finely modeled face was framed in an aureole of extremely correct white hair. Indeed, in spite of her smile and an air of genuine kindness, correctness seemed to be her predominant feature. Everything about her was so ordered, so exactly right, that she had the rather formal unimaginative look to which the whole race of royalties is doomed by the walls of the Royal Academy of Arts. It is not certain that Lady Pridmore felt this to be a hardship. Mary roundly declared that nothing would have induced her mother to part with it. She had often been mistaken for this or that personage, and although much teased on the subject by her daughters, it was an open secret that such resemblances were precious in her sight. To this lady's "How do you do?" Mr. Harper responded with incoherency. But the watchful Mary, who knew "the effect that mother had on some people," promptly came to the young man's aid and helped him out with great gallantry and success. With the laugh peculiarly hers, Mary fixed the sailorman in a chair at a strategic distance from her mother, gave him a cup of tea and a liberal piece of cake, also thoughtfully provided him with a plate and a small table to put it on, because this creature of swift intuitions somehow felt that he had not quite got his drawing-room legs at present. "You have a whole volume of questions to answer presently, Mr. Harper," said Mary, "so take plenty of nourishment, please. One of the pink is recommended. They've got maraschino." She took one herself and bit it in half with a gusto that rather amazed the young man; somehow he had not looked for it in a real Hyde Park lady. "Mmm--I told you--mmm--Klondyke." The real Hyde Park lady was speaking with her mouth full. "Klondyke is the black sheep of the family. My mother is simply dying to talk to you about him." This was not strictly true. Lady Pridmore was not of the kind that simply dies to talk of anything to anybody. Before she married Sir John, she had been a Miss Colthurst, of Suffolk. At the time of her union with that gentleman, then plain Mr. Pridmore, _chargé d'affaires_ at Porocatepetl, and afterwards Her Britannic Majesty's representative in several European capitals, her standard of conduct had been rigidly fixed. She had seen much of life since, but nothing had ever caused her to modify it. She was greatly interested in the perennial subject of her eldest son, but to her mind, as it would have been to the collective mind of the Colthursts of Suffolk from immemorial time, it was merely an abuse of language for Mary to state that she was simply dying to hear about Klondyke. She was always _much_ interested, nevertheless, in the doings of poor dear Jack.