fitting into a waist not measuring more than twenty-two inches,
reclined in a long deck-chair, looking the very pink of painted
and powdered perfection.

"You are so very lenient," Lady Chetwynd Lyle was saying, as she
bent over her needlework. "So very lenient, my dear Lady
Fulkeward, that I am afraid you do not read people's characters as
correctly as I do. I have had, owing to my husband's position in
journalism, a great deal of social experience, and I assure you I
do NOT think the Princess Ziska a safe person. She may be
perfectly proper--she MAY be--but she is not the style we are
accustomed to in London."

"I should rather think not!" interrupted Lord Fulkeward, hastily.
"By Jove! She wouldn't have a hair left on her head in London,
don'cher know!"

"What do you mean?" inquired Muriel Chetwynd Lyle, simpering. "You
really do say such funny things, Lord Fulkeward!"

"Do I?" and the young nobleman was so alarmed and embarrassed at
the very idea of his ever saying funny things that he was rendered
quite speechless for a moment. Anon he took heart and resumed:
"Er--well--I mean that the society women would tear her to bits in
no time. She'd get asked nowhere, but she'd get blackguarded
everywhere; she couldn't help herself with that face and those
eyes."

His mother laughed.