conversation except at dinner. People simply made friends, flirted, and
enjoyed themselves.

As the clock struck eight the Mitchells were announced. Edith could
scarcely control a laugh as Mr Mitchell came in, he looked so utterly
unlike the dangerous lover Madame Frabelle had conjured up. He was
immensely tall, broad, loosely built, large-shouldered, with a red
beard, a twinkle in his eye, and the merriest of laughs. He was a
delightful man, but there was no romance about him. Besides, Edith
remembered him as a black poodle.

* * * * *

Mrs. Mitchell struck a useful note, and seemed a perfect complement to
her husband, the ideal wife for him. She was about forty-five, but being
slim, animated, and well dressed (though entirely without _chic_), she
seemed a good deal younger.

Mr. Mitchell might have been any age between sixty and sixty-five, and
had the high spirits and vitality of a boy.

It was impossible to help liking this delightful couple; they fully
deserved their popularity. In the enormous house at Hampstead, arranged
like a country mansion, where they lived, Mr. Mitchell made it the
object of his life to collect Bohemians as other people collect Venetian
glass, from pure love of the material. His wife, with a silly woman's
subtlety, having rather lower ideals--that is to say, a touch of the
very human vulgarity known as social ambition--made use of his
Bohemianism to help her on in her mundane success. This was the
principle of the thing. If things were well done--and they always were