ears. She had laid aside her London hat, and carried a red cotton
Contadina's umbrella, which threw a rosy glow onto the oval of her thin
face and its colourless complexion. She bore the weight of her forty
years extremely lightly, and but for the droop of skin at the corners
of her mouth, she might have passed as a much younger woman. Her face
was otherwise unlined and bore no trace of the ravages of emotional
living, which both ages and softens. Certainly there was nothing soft
about her, and very little of the signs of age, and it would have been
reasonable to conjecture that twenty years later she would look but
little older than she did today. For such emotions as she was victim of
were the sterile and ageless emotions of art; such desires as beset her
were not connected with her affections, but her ambitions. Dynasty she
had none, for she was childless, and thus her ambitions were limited to
the permanence and security of her own throne as queen of Riseholme. She
really asked nothing more of life than the continuance of such harvests
as she had so plenteously reaped for these last ten years. As long as
she directed the life of Riseholme, took the lead in its culture and
entertainment, and was the undisputed fountain-head of all its
inspirations, and from time to time refreshed her memory as to the
utter inferiority of London she wanted nothing more. But to secure
that she dedicated all that she had of ease, leisure and income.
Being practically indefatigable the loss of ease and leisure troubled
her but little and being in extremely comfortable circumstances, she
had no need to economise in her hospitalities. She might easily look
forward to enjoying an unchanging middle-aged activity, while
generations of youth withered round her, and no star, remotely rising,
had as yet threatened to dim her unrivalled effulgence. Though
essentially autocratic, her subjects were allowed and even encouraged
to develop their own minds on their own lines, provided always that
those lines met at the junction where she was station-master. With