to defy any natural process. Carrying on a fight in which there is
a possibility of winning may not do serious harm to a character, but
carrying on a fight which must inevitably be lost always hardens and
embitters the combatant. During those years of her _fausse jeunesse_
Lady Sellingworth was at her worst.

For one thing she became the victim of jealousy. She was secretly
jealous of good-looking young women, and, spreading her evil wide like a
cloud, she was even jealous of youth. To be young was to possess a
gift which she had lost, and a gift which men love as they love but few
things. She could not help secretly hating the possessors of it.

She had now become enrolled in the "old guard," and had adopted as her
device their motto, "Never give up." She was one of the more or less
mysterious fighters of London. She fought youth incessantly, and she
fought Time. And sometimes the weariness and the nausea of battle lay
heavy upon her. Her expression began to change. She never lost, she
never could lose, her distinction, but it was slightly blurred, slightly
tarnished. She preserved the appearance of bonhomie, but her cordiality,
her good nature, were not what they had been. Formerly she had had
marvellous spirits; now she was often accompanied into the world by the
black dog. And when she was alone he sat by the hearth with her.

She began to hate being a widow. Sometimes she thought that she wished
she had had children. But then it occurred to her that they might have
been daughters, lovely girls now perhaps, showing to society what she
had once been. With such daughters she would surely have been forced
into abdication. For she knew that she could never have entered into a
contest with her own children. Perhaps it was best as it was, best that
she was childless.