‘Or something even worse,’ supplemented Mrs. Mimburn, with a smile of worldly knowledge. She was looking most typical that afternoon. She was a little round dark woman, with deep, luscious eyes, and more black hair than Nature had provided. Her gown was of brown velvet, adorned with an incalculable number of ruckings, tuckings, ruchings, quillings, flutings, flouncings, rosettes, and insertions. Her parasol lost its outline in a foam of scarlet, and her brown tricorne hat, with its one enormous geranium-coloured plume, was worn at an audacious tilt, in exact imitation of that assumed by Marie de Lorraine in the second act of ‘Mélanges du Divorce.’ That gorgeous lady, whose notoriety almost passed into fame, was Mrs. Mimburn’s favourite model. She had constituted herself the especial chronicler of Marie de Lorraine, copied her clothes devotedly, bought every scent and powder that bore her name, and collected her anecdotes, apocryphal or unpublishable, with as much enthusiasm as a pious Pope accumulates relics. While the hat recalled ‘Mélanges du Divorce,’ the parasol to-day was based on that in ‘Infidèle,’ the gown was collated from two that appeared in ‘Messalineries,’ the tippet’s prototype had figured in ‘Autour de Mitylène,’ and the Parisian pearls that twined round Mrs. Mimburn’s throat had been specially copied from the historic necklace which her heroine had extracted from Prince Henri de Valois, to the general scandal of Europe. Even in the matter of cosmetics Mrs. Mimburn was faithful to her model, and her rich complexion glowed like a plum behind its bloom through a skin-tight mask of Blanc de Perle ‘Marie,’ while her ruby lips owed their flamboyancy of tint to the Vermeil de Lorraine. Lady Adela looked at her across the tea-table with a kind smile. She felt that her sister-in-law added colour to the room. Lady Adela was one of those women whose habitations have a certain cool tonelessness that matches their own character, and, like their disposition, suits with any tint that may be introduced. Her boudoir was nondescript and mild in scheme; pale, sweet flowers stood here and there in transparent glasses, and the summer light flowed in, pale and ghostly, through the lowered white silk blinds. Entrenched behind china and silver, Lady Adela seemed the incarnation of the room’s spirit; she also had the same indefinable pale sweetness. Her gown was grey, her abundant beautiful hair snow-white, her features were filled with a gentle complacency. Altogether she irresistibly called to mind an old white rabbit--a very soft, very fluffy, very reverend and lovable old white rabbit. ‘Dear Min,’ she said at last, ‘you have no notion what a comfort this engagement is to me.’ Again Mrs. Mimburn bridled. Why could La-la never realize the difference between Min and Minne?