season every year and had been presented at Court, and some of us even
went to London for the season.

Lady Ardaragh was one of those. She used to quiz us openly for our
old-fashioned ways, but so sweetly that even my grandmother laughed with
her. And she used to say that if one were too particular about one's
visiting-list so as to exclude the newly rich people, one would have to
mark off half Park Lane and that wonderful district which she would have
us believe lay all about it. One met the oddest people in her
drawing-room, where she fluttered about among them like a gay little
butterfly while Sir Arthur, her serious husband, locked himself away
among his books.

"If I hadn't such oddities I should bore myself to extinction, dear Lady
St. Leger," she said to my grandmother once. "Arthur will keep me here
nine months of the year. What is one to do?"

"Why, I am sure there is plenty to do," my grandmother replied simply.
"Bawn is busy from morning to night, what with her garden and her birds
and her dogs and her reading and music, and now with the Creamery. So
should I be if Lord St. Leger did not claim so much of my attention. I
neglect things sadly nowadays because my husband leans on me as a staff,
although I am nearly as old as he. And there is your dear boy."

Lady Ardaragh frowned.

"Sir Arthur never knows how I look, what I put on," she said. "He was an
ardent lover enough, but now I do not think I could provoke him if I
tried. He simply does not think of me. An illuminated manuscript is more
to him than I am; and he would rather have a black-letter book than my