her. The breach was widened by their unconcealed flirtations--a
description mentally applied to the most ordinary man-and-woman
acquaintanceships on either side, but not inappropriate in all cases.
Claud ever loved the company of handsome women who appreciated him; Deb
naturally inclined to nice men in preference to the nicest women; and
each liked to show the other that he or she was still of high
importance to somebody. Rumours of impending marriage were continually
being wafted to his ears or hers, but nothing came of them. He was
confirmed in luxurious bachelorhood; she was aware of many
fortune-hunters, and could not bring herself to value any of her
disinterested suitors at the price of her freedom. So the one-time
lovers drifted more and more apart, until somehow they lost sight of
each other altogether; and meanwhile the years made them old without
their knowing it.

She was unreasonably upset on one occasion by the offer of a specific
for grey hair from a fashionable London hair-dresser. It was absolutely
permanent, harmless and undetectable, he said. "But I am not grey," she
indignantly informed him. Whereupon she saw his keen professional eye
wander about her brow as he murmured something about the faint
beginnings that might as well be checked. At home she studied the
matter carefully in a strong light, and called Rosalie, her maid, to
aid her. The little Frenchwoman assured her that a microscope was
needed to detect a white thread in that beautiful mass of dark
nut-brown. With a microscope, no doubt, as many as half a dozen might
be discerned dimly, just where it waved back from mademoiselle's face.

That same afternoon she and Rosalie left town for one of their
country-house visits. It was a weepy autumn day, and she was not as
fresh as usual--the hair-dresser, combined with some troublesome