and talks volubly and confidentially of her young men. She had, of
course, nothing of the middle-aged woman of the past, who at her age
would have been definitely on the shelf, doing wool-work or collecting
recipes there. Nor did she resemble the strong-minded type in perpetual
tailor-made clothes, with short grey hair and eye-glasses, who belongs
to clubs and talks chiefly of the franchise. Madame Frabelle was soft,
womanly, amiable, yet extremely outspoken, very firm, and inclined to
lay down the law. She was certainly charming, as Bruce and Edith agreed
every day (even now, when they were beginning to wonder when she was
going away!). She had an extraordinary amount of personal magnetism,
since she convinced both the Ottleys, as she had convinced Lady Conroy,
that she was wonderfully clever: in fact, that she knew everything.

A fortnight had passed, and Edith was beginning to grow doubtful. Was
she so clever? Did she know everything? Did she know anything at all?
Long arguments, that grew quite heated and excited at luncheon or
dinner, about the origin of a word, the author of a book, and various
debatable questions of the kind, invariably ended, after reference to a
dictionary or an encyclopaedia, in Madame Frabelle proving herself, with
an air of triumph, to be completely and entirely wrong. She was as
generally positive as she was fatally mistaken. Yet so intense a belief
had she in her intuition as well as in her own inaccurate information
that her hypnotised hosts were growing daily more and more under her
thumb. She took it for granted that everyone would take her for
granted--and everyone did.

Was all this agreeable or otherwise? Edith thought it must be, or how
could they bear it at all? If it had not been extremely pleasant it
would have been simply impossible.