friends could boast of--had she been inclined to do so. A baronial
hall, dating from the Conquest--a ducal castle, not to speak of a
Royal Presence Chamber--was nothing to Deborah Pennycuick after a
while.

To see her on a crowded London staircase, laughing with a prince or a
prime minister, was a common object of the season for a number
of years; while varnishing days and first nights would have lacked
charm for the society reporter who could not place her fine figure and
her French gowns in his pictures of these scenes. Goodwood and Cowes
were familiar with her striking face and her expert interest in horses
and yachts; Highland shooting-lodges, English hunting-fields, claimed
her for their own. Southern Europe, the Nile, Bayreuth--in short,
wherever social life was bright, comfortable and select, there she
turned up promiscuous, as the spirit moved her, to be welcomed
open-armed as a matter of course. Men, young and old, continued to pay
her homage, which was not just the sort of homage they paid to Frances;
proposals of marriage were, or might have been if not nipped in the
bud, almost as plentiful as invitations to country houses in the
autumn. And she relished it all with singular enjoyment--until she
began to feel the approach of that winter and evening of life which has
so sharp a chill for those who have loved the sun.

Claud Dalzell was likewise a denizen of the great world that was hers
and not Francie's, and, close corporation as it is, they were never far
off each other's beat, seldom in ignorance of each other's whereabouts.
At the same time, they also did not touch. It was known throughout the
great world, which is so small, that there was a deadly feud between
them; and tactful hostesses took pains not to bring them into
juxtaposition. In public places, when meetings occurred by accident,