ANGEL PAVEMK NT

housekeeper and about fifteen servants and a marvellous
maid of my own and umpteen Paris model gowns every
season and a house in Town and a place in the country
and a very attractive dark young man, very aristocratic
and a racing motorist or yachtsman or something like
that, terribly in love with me but just devoted and re-
spectful all the time and coming and looking so miser-
able and me saying, I'm sorry, my dear, but you can see
how it is, I can never love anybody but Howard, but
we can still be friends, can't we?"

This silly girl still went rambling idiotically on while
there returned into the rest of Mrs. Denuugham's mind
various queries and worries about the sauce for the fish
and the cr&ne caramel not setting properly and Agnes
spilling things. And all the time she was powdering
her back or neck, trying on the crystal beads and then
the amber, rubbing her cheeks with a tiny reddened pad,
and staring at her reflection in the Jacobean mirror
that she had bought at Brighton and that turned out to
be a poor mirror and not Jacobean at all The one con-
solation was that you always knew that you actually
looked better than you did in that stupid mirror. Re-
membering this for the thousandth time, Mrs. Dersing-
ham switched off the light, stood outside the night
nursery a moment to discover if the children xvere quiet,
then joined her husband in the drawing-room,

"Oh, thank goodness, nobody's here yet/' she said,
pulling a cushion or two about, then warming her hands,
"It's such a ghastly rush. It's wonderful to have a few
minutes' peace and quietness." She was already talking
as if company were present*
"Rather,", said Mr, Dersingham, loyally.
She stood in front of him now, "I suppose I look a