people in London. For they were both thorough bred and naturally
kind-hearted, and so there were always showers of crumbs falling from
their well-spread table for the benefit of those about them. Their
friends had a magnificent time with them and so did their servants. They
liked others to be pleased with them and satisfied because of them. For
they must live in a warm atmosphere. And nothing makes the atmosphere
so cold about a man or woman as the egoism which shows itself in
miserliness, or in the unwillingness that others should have a good
time.

When Lady Sellingworth was thirty-nine Lord Sellingworth died abruptly.
The doctors said that his heart was worn out; others said something
different, something less kind.

For the second time Lady Sellingworth was a widow; for the second time
she spent the period of mourning in Paris. And when it was over she
went for a tour round the world with a small party of friends; Sir Guy
Letchworth and his plain, but gay and clever wife, and Roger Brand, a
millionaire and a famous Edwardian.

Brand was a bachelor, and had long been a devoted adherent of Lady
Sellingworth's, and people, of course, said that he was going to marry
her. But they eventually came back from their long tour comfortably
disengaged. Brand went back to his enormous home in Park Lane, and Lady
Sellingworth settled down in number 18A Berkeley Square.

She was now forty-one. She had arrived at a very difficult period in the
life of a beauty. The freshness and bloom of youth had inevitably left
her. The adjectives applied to her were changing. The word "lovely" was
dropped. Its place was taken by such epithets as "handsome," "splendid