peach-bloom complexion, and a figure which had been so massaged,
rubbed, pressed and artistically corseted as to appear positively
sylph-like. She danced like a fairy, she who had once been called
"old" Lady Fulkeward; she smoked cigarettes; she laughed like a
child at every trivial thing--any joke, however stale, flat and
unprofitable, was sufficient to stir her light pulses to
merriment; and she flirted--oh, heavens!--HOW she flirted!--with a
skill and a grace and a knowledge and an aplomb that nearly drove
Muriel and Dolly Chetwynd Lyle frantic. They, poor things, were
beaten out of the field altogether by her superior tact and art of
"fence," and they hated her accordingly and called her in private
a "horrid old woman," which perhaps, when her maid undressed her,
she was. But she was having a distinctly "good time" in Cairo; she
called her son, who was in delicate health, "my poor dear little
boy!" and he, though twenty-eight on his last birthday, was
reduced to such an abject condition of servitude by her
assertiveness, impudent gayety and general freedom of manner, that
he could not open his mouth without alluding to "my mother," and
using "my mother" as a peg whereon to hang all his own opinions
and emotions as well as the opinions and emotions of other people.

"Lady Fulkeward admires the Princess very much, I believe?" said
another lounger who had not yet spoken.

"Oh, as to that!"--and Lord Fulkeward roused himself to some faint
show of energy. "Who wouldn't admire her? By Jove! Only, I tell
you what--there's something I weird about her eyes. Fact! I don't
like her eyes."

"Shut up, Fulke! She has beautiful eyes!" burst out Courtney,