Their close intimacy of the past warranted freedom of speech in the present.

‘My nature did undergo a change, and a severe one,’ answered Lady Maulevrier, gloomily.

’It was that horrid—­and I daresay unfortunate scandal about his lordship; and then the sad shock of his death,’ murmured Lady Kirkbank, sympathetically.  ’Most women, with your youth and beauty, would have forgotten the scandal and the husband in a twelvemonth, and would have made a second marriage more brilliant than the first.  But no Indian widow who ever performed suttee was more worthy of praise than you, or even that person of Ephesus, whose story I have heard somewhere.  Indeed, I have always spoken of your life as a long suttee.  But you mean to re-appear in society next season, I hope, when you present your granddaughter?’

’I shall certainly go up to London to present her, and possibly I may spend the season in town; but I shall feel like Rip Van Winkle.’

’No, no, you won’t, my dear Di.  You have kept yourself au courant, I know.  Even my silly gossiping letters may have been of some use.’

‘They have been most valuable.  Let me give you another cup of tea,’ said Lady Maulevrier, who had been officiating at her own exquisite tea-table, an arrangement of inlaid woods, antique silver, and modern china, which her friend pronounced a perfect poem.

Indeed, the whole room was poetic, Lady Kirkbank declared, and there are many highly praised scenes which less deserve the epithet.  The dark red walls and cedar dado, the stamped velvet curtains, of an indescribable shade between silver-grey and olive, the Sheraton furniture, the parqueterie floor and Persian prayer-rugs, the deep yet brilliant hues of crackle porcelain and Chinese cloisonne enamel, the artistic fireplace, with dog-stove, low brass fender, and ingle-nook recessed under the high mantelpiece, all combined to form a luxurious and harmonious whole.

Lady Kirkbank admired the tout ensemble in the fitful light of the fire, the dim grey of deepening twilight.

‘There never was a more delicious cell!’ she exclaimed, ’but still I should feel it a prison, if I had to spend six weeks in the year in it.  I never stay more than six weeks anywhere out of London; and I always find six weeks more than enough.  The first fortnight is rapture, the third and fourth weeks are calm content, the fifth is weariness, the sixth a fever to be gone.  I once tried a seventh week at Pontresina, and I hated the place so intensely that I dared not go back there for the next three years.  But now tell me.  Diana, have you really performed suttee, have you buried yourself alive in this sweet spot deliberately, or has the love of retirement grown upon you, and have you become a kind of lotus-eater?’

’I believe I have become a kind of lotus-eater.  My retirement here has been no sentimental sacrifice to Lord Maulevrier’s memory.’