Lady Holme still remained perfectly grave.

"Do you? Why?" she inquired.

"Can't you guess why?"

"Our charity to our sister women?"

She was smiling now.

"You teach me such a lot," he said.

He drank his Kummel.

"I always learn something when I talk to a woman. I've learnt something from you."

Lady Holme did not ask him what it was. She saw that he was now more intent on her than he had been on Miss Schley, and she got up to go, feeling more cheerful than she had since she left the _atelier_ of "Cupido."

"Don't go."

"I must."

"Already! May I come and call?"

"Your father knows my address."

"Oh, I say--but--"

"You're not going already!" cried Mrs. Wolfstein, who was having a second glass of Benedictine and beginning to talk rather outrageously and with a more than usually pronounced foreign accent.

"I must, really."

"I'm afraid my son has bored you," murmured Sir Donald, in his worn-out voice.

"No, I like him," she replied, loud enough for Leo to hear.

Sir Donald did not look particularly gratified at this praise of his achievement. Lady Holme took an airy leave of everybody. When she came to Pimpernel Schley she said:

"I wish you a great success, Miss Schley."

"Many thanks," drawled the vestal virgin, who was still looking into her coffee cup.

"I must come to your first night. Have you ever acted in London?"

"Never."

"You won't be nervous?"

"Nervous! Don't know the word."

She bent to sip her coffee.

When Lady Holme reached the door of the Carlton, and was just entering one of the revolving cells to gain the pavement, she heard Lady Cardington's low voice behind her.

"Let me drive you home, dear."

At the moment she felt inclined to be alone. She had even just refused Sir Donald's earnest request to accompany her to her carriage. Had any other woman made her this offer she would certainly have refused it. But few people refused any request of Lady Cardington's. Lady Holme, like the rest of the world, felt the powerful influence that lay in her gentleness as a nerve lies in a body. And then had she not wept when Lady Holme sang a tender song to her? In a moment they were driving up the Haymarket together in Lady Cardington's barouche.

The weather had grown brighter. Wavering gleams of light broke through the clouds and lay across the city, giving a peculiarly unctuous look to the slimy streets, in which there were a good many pedestrians more or less splashed with mud. There was a certain hopefulness in the atmosphere, and yet a pathos such as there always is in Spring, when it walks through London ways, bearing itself half nervously, like a country cousin.

"I don't like this time of year," said Lady Cardington.

She was leaning back and glancing anxiously about her.

"But why not?" asked Lady Holme. "What's the matter with it?"

"Youth."

"But surely--"

"The year's too young. And at my age one feels very often as if the advantage of youth were an unfair advantage."

"Dare I ask--?"

She checked herself, looking at her companion's snow-white hair, which was arranged in such a way that it looked immensely thick under the big black hat she wore--a hat half grandmotherly and half coquettish, that certainly suited her to perfection.

"Spring--" she was beginning rather quickly; but Lady Cardington interrupted her.

"Fifty-eight," she said.

She laughed anxiously and looked at Lady Holme.

"Didn't you think I was older?"

"I don't know that I ever thought about it," replied Lady Holme, with the rather careless frankness she often used towards women.

"Of course not. Why should you, or anyone? When a woman's once over fifty it really doesn't matter much whether she's fifty-one or seventy-one. Does it?"

Lady Holme thought for a moment. Then she said:

"I really don't know. You see, I'm not a man."

Lady Cardington's forehead puckered and her mouth drooped piteously.

"A woman's real life is very short," she said. "But her desire for real life can last very long--her silly, useless desire."

"But if her looks remain?"

"They don't."