know what I shall do. My dear Ewen, do you know what I discovered
last night?"

Mrs. Hooper rose and stood over her husband impressively.

"Well--what?"

"You remember Connie went to bed early. Well, when I came up, and passed
her door, I noticed something--somebody in that room was--smoking! I
could not be mistaken. And this morning I questioned the housemaid.
'Yes, ma'am,' she said, 'her ladyship smoked two cigarettes last night,
and Mrs. Tinkler'--that's the maid--'says she always smokes two before
she goes to bed.' Then I spoke to Tinkler--whose manner to me, I
consider, is not at all what it should be--and she said that Connie
smoked three cigarettes a day always--that Lady Risborough smoked--that
all the ladies in Rome smoked--that Connie began it before her mother
died--and her mother didn't mind--"

"Well then, my dear, you needn't mind," exclaimed Dr. Hooper.

"I always thought Ella Risborough went to pieces--rather--in that
dreadful foreign life," said Mrs. Hooper firmly. "Everybody does--you
can't help it."

"I don't know what you mean by going 'to pieces,'" said Ewen Hooper
warmly. "I only know that when they came here ten years ago, I thought
her one of the most attractive--one of the most charming women I had
ever seen."

From where he stood, on the hearth-rug of his study, smoking an