'Do you smoke?' said the nurse coolly to Conroy.

'I haven't in years. Now you mention it, I think I'd like a
cigarette--or something.'

'I used to. D'you think it would keep me quiet?' Miss Henschil said.

'Perhaps. Try these.' The nurse handed them her cigarette-case.

'Don't take anything else,' she commanded, and went away with the
tea-basket.

'Good!' grunted Conroy, between mouthfuls of tobacco.

'Better than nothing,' said Miss Henschil; but for a while they felt
ashamed, yet with the comfort of children punished together.

'Now,' she whispered, 'who were you when you were a man?'

Conroy told her, and in return she gave him her history. It delighted
them both to deal once more in worldly concerns--families, names,
places, and dates--with a person of understanding.

She came, she said, of Lancashire folk--wealthy cotton-spinners, who
still kept the broadened _a_ and slurred aspirate of the old stock. She
lived with an old masterful mother in an opulent world north of
Lancaster Gate, where people in Society gave parties at a Mecca called
the Langham Hotel.