quantity of sweet milk, which was always brought on her breakfast
tray.

The Baroness seated herself before her mirror, in a glare of cruel
light which revealed every blemish in her complexion, every line
about the mouth and eyes.

"You are really hideously passee, mon amie," she observed as she
peered at herself searchingly; "but we will remedy all that."

Dipping a soft linen handkerchief in the bowl of steaming milk and
water, she applied it to her face, holding it closely over the brow
and eyes and about the mouth, until every pore was saturated and
every weary drawn tissue fed and strengthened by the tonic. After
this she dashed ice-cold water over her face. Still there were
little folds at the corners of the eyelids, and an ugly line across
the brow, and these were manipulated with painstaking care, and
treated with mysterious oils and fragrant astringents and finally
washed in cool toilet water and lightly brushed with powder, until at
the end of an hour's labour, the face of the Baroness had resumed its
roseleaf bloom and transparent smoothness for which she was so
famous. And when by the closest inspection at the mirror, in the
broadest light, she saw no flaw in skin, hair, or teeth, the Baroness
proceeded to dress for a drive. Even the most jealous rival would
have been obliged to concede that she looked like a woman of twenty-
eight, that most fascinating of all ages, as she took her seat in the
carriage.

In the early days of her life in Beryngford, when as the Baroness Le
Fevre she had led society in the little town, Mrs Lawrence had been