Perhaps the most striking result of the countess's return was the impetus it gave to Mrs. Caffyn's Wednesday afternoons. The punctilious ladies came as they had been coming steadily for twelve years; but a quantity of less punctilious ladies also came and were so much over-awed by meeting a countess in a West Kensington drawing-room that they had no appetite for cakes, which was just as well because otherwise the strain put upon the normal provision by so many extra visitors might have been too much for it. In addition to the Wednesday ladies, several friends of Dorothy's youth visited No. 17 in the evenings, and though by now the billiard-table was more like a neglected tennis-lawn, she played one or two games to remind her of old times, thinking how scornful she would have been twelve years ago if any one had prophesied to her such indulgence in sentiment. Among these friends of youth came Wilfred Curlew, who in outward appearance was the least changed of all. His career had been successful, if the editorship of a society paper can be considered success. Being a journalist, he rightly considered himself indispensable at home, and it is unlikely that his inaccurate and cheery paragraphs in _The Way of the World_ did any more to make the war ridiculous than some of the inaccurate and cheery despatches sent home from the front by generals. A slight tendency which he had formerly had toward a cockney accent had been checked by an elocutionist who had imprisoned his voice in his throat, whence it was never allowed to stray. If Lady Clarehaven had once been a Vanity girl, Mr. Wilfred Curlew, the editor of _The Way of the World_, had once written fierce revolutionary articles about Society in _The Red Lamp_; and whereas Lady Clarehaven had long been indifferent to her past, Mr. Curlew was still sensitive about his, as sensitive as a man who oils the wheels of railway-coaches in termini would be if it were known that he had once been a train-wrecker.