rdquo;

“Hideous?”

Mrs. Munden made a mouth for it.  “Hideous is too much to say; she doesn’t really require them as bad as that.  But consistently, cheerfully, loyally plain.  It’s really a most happy relation.  She loves them for it.”

“And for what do they love her?”

“Why just for the amiability that they produce in her.  Then also for their ‘home.’  It’s a career for them.”

“I see.  But if that’s the case,” I asked, “why are they so difficult to find?”

“Oh they must be safe; it’s all in that: her being able to depend on them to keep to the terms of the bargain and never have moments of rising—as even the ugliest woman will now and then (say when she’s in love)—superior to themselves.”

I turned it over.  “Then if they can’t inspire passions the poor things mayn’t even at least feel them?”

“She distinctly deprecates it.  That’s why such a man as you may be after all a complication.”

I continued to brood.  “You’re very sure Miss Dadd’s ailment isn’t an affection that, being smothered, has struck in?”  My joke, however, wasn’t well timed, for I afterwards learned that the unfortunate lady’s state had been, even while I spoke, such as to forbid all hope.  The worst symptoms had appeared; she was destined not to recover; and a week later I heard from Mrs. Munden that she would in fact “gurgle” no more.

CHAPTER II

All this had been for Lady Beldonald an agitation so great that access to her apartment was denied for a time even to her sister-in-law.  It was much more out of the question of course that she should unveil her face to a person of my special business with it; so that the quest