narrative of an amputation, and listened with all her ears.

“The Empress was a very lovely woman, but I believe she was not very young when she married,” said the elder Miss Semaphore reflectively.

“Oh, dear no! Eight or nine-and-twenty at least. Some people said two-and-thirty.”

“What matter does that make?” interposed the polite Mr. Dumaresq. “A handsome woman is only the age she looks.”

Miss Semaphore sighed. She had carefully examined her face before dinner and discovered a new wrinkle. It was borne in on her that she scarcely looked as young as she felt, but she made an effort to seem as if eight-and-twenty, or, at most, two-and-thirty, was still before her.

“It must be dreadful to grow old,” said Mrs. Whitley affectedly.

18“There are so many aids to beauty nowadays,” said Mr. Dumaresq, “that no lady need look a day older than she likes.”

18

“But the use of cosmetics is odious,” cried Miss Semaphore. “For my part I never could understand how any one could use paints and powders.”

Good breeding was not Mr. Lorimer’s strong point, and, in boarding-houses, people say things to each other that elsewhere are the privilege of relatives.

“Dyes,” he said, looking fixedly at Miss Semaphore’s hair, “dyes are most injurious—worst of all, in fact. Horrible case in the paper the other day. A woman dyed her hair black one morning, died herself next! Instantaneous softening of the brain, they said. The stuff soaked in.”

The obvious application lent point to the sally. The medical lady, who prided herself on being a fine woman, needing no aid from art, smiled broadly. She could not, however, resist saying there was no such disease as instantaneous softening of the brain.

Mrs. Dumaresq, mindful of her diplomatic training, looked so grave that a child would have suspected something wrong. Miss Semaphore murmured “How dreadful!” 19She alone saw no personal allusion, for it never struck her that anyone could think she tinted her tresses. Miss Prudence looked as angrily at the speaker as her kind face permitted. Major Jones had just said, “Eh! what’s that?” when Mrs. Wilcox rose, and at her signal the ladies swept upstairs, leaving the men to cigars and scandal.

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