was beautiful, there was no doubt about it, when you married me."

"You were, my dear," agreed her husband: "As a girl few could hold a
candle to you."

"It was the only thing about me that you valued, my beauty," continued
his wife; "and it went so quickly. I feel sometimes as if I had
swindled you."

"But there is a beauty of the mind, of the soul," remarked the Rev.
Nathaniel Armitage, "that to some men is more attractive than mere
physical perfection."

The soft eyes of the faded lady shone for a moment with the light of
pleasure. "I am afraid Dick is not of that number," she sighed.

"Well, as I said just now about my feet," answered her husband
genially, "I didn't make myself. I always have been a slave to beauty
and always shall be. There would be no sense in pretending among
chums that you haven't lost your looks, old girl." He laid his fine
hand with kindly intent upon her bony shoulder. "But there is no call
for you to fret yourself as if you had done it on purpose. No one but
a lover imagines a woman growing more beautiful as she grows older."

"Some women would seem to," answered his wife.

Involuntarily she glanced to where Mrs. Camelford sat with elbows
resting on the table; and involuntarily also the small twinkling eyes
of her husband followed in the same direction. There is a type that
reaches its prime in middle age. Mrs. Camelford, _nee_ Jessica