Lady Kingsmead was one of those piteous beings, a middle-aged young
woman. She was forty-six, but across a considerably-lighted room looked
thirty-six. The shock, when one approached her, was so much the greater.
Her plentiful, grey-streaked hair dwelt in disgrace behind a glossy
transformation, and her face had, from constant massage and make-up, a
curious air of not belonging to her any more than did the wavy hair
above it.

The lines that the mercifully deliberate on-coming of age draws on all
of us were, it is true, nearly obliterated, but in their place was a
certain blankness that was very unbeautiful indeed.

However, she liked herself as she made herself, and most people thought
her wonderfully young-looking.

The question of age, real and apparent, is a curious one that gives
furiously to think, as the French say. No one on earth could consider it
an advantage for a child of twelve to wear the facial aspect of a baby
of two, nor for a girl of twenty to look like a child of ten, but later
on this equation apparently fails to hold good, and Lady Kingsmead in
appearing (at a little distance) nearly ten years her own junior, was as
vastly pleased with herself as, considering the time and the care she
devoted to the subject, she deserved to be.

As she came downstairs the evening of the day of her daughter's
unusually confidential conversation with her son, Brigit joined her.

"Ugh, mother, you have too much scent," observed the girl, curling her
upper lip rather unpleasantly. "It's horrid."