Lady Maulevrier suffered an absolute shock at beholding the friend of her youth.  She had not accustomed herself to the idea that women in society could raddle their cheeks, stain their lips, and play tricks before high heaven with their eyebrows and eyelashes.  In her own youth painted faces had been the ghastly privilege of a class of womankind of which the women of society were supposed to know nothing.  Persons who showed their ankles and rouged their cheeks were to be seen of an afternoon in Bond Street; but Lady Diana Angersthorpe had been taught to pass them by as if she saw them not, to behold without seeing these creatures outside the pale.  And now she saw her own dearest friend, a person distinctly within the pale, plastered with bismuth and stained with carmine, and wearing hair of a colour so obviously false and inharmonious, that child-like faith could hardly accept it as reality.  Forty years ago Lady Kirkbank’s long ringlets had been darkest glossiest brown, to-day she wore a tousled fringe of bright yellow, piquantly contrasting with Vandyke brown eyebrows.

It took Lady Maulevrier some moments to get over the shock.  She drew a chair to the fire and established her friend in it, and then, with a little gasp, she said: 

‘I am charmed to see you again, Georgie!’

’You darling, I was sure you would be glad.  But you must find me awfully changed—­awfully.’

For worlds Lady Maulevrier could not have denied this truth.  Happily Lady Kirkbank did not wait for an answer.

’Society is so wearing, and George and I never seem to get an interval of quiet.  Kirkbank is to be full of men next week.  Your granddaughter will have a good time.’

‘There will be a few women, of course?’

’Oh, yes, there’s no avoiding that; only one doesn’t reckon them.  Sir George only counts his guns.  We expect a splendid season.  I shall send you some birds of my own shooting.’

‘You shoot!’ exclaimed Lady Maulevrier, amazed.

’Shoot!  I should think I do.  What else is there to amuse one in Scotland, after the salmon fishing is over?  I have never missed a season for the last thirty years, unless we have been abroad.’

‘Please, don’t innoculate Lesbia with your love of sport.’

’What! you wouldn’t like her to shoot?  Well, perhaps you are right.  It is hardly the thing for a pretty girl with her fortune to make.  It spoils the delicacy of the skin.  But I’m afraid she’ll find Kirkbank dull if she doesn’t go out with the guns.  She can meet us with the rest of the women at luncheon.  We have some capital picnic luncheons on the moor, I can assure you.’

’I know she will enjoy herself with you.  She has been accustomed to a very quiet life here.’

’It is a lovely spot; but I own I cannot understand how you can have lived here exclusively during all these years—­you who used to be all life and fire, loving change, action, political and diplomatic society, to dance upon the crest of the wave, as it were.  Your whole nature must have suffered some curious change.’