“My uncle,” said Adrian, “is one by one losing his accessories.  After a while it will be his teeth.”

Cecil was perplexed.  “I don’t know exactly what to do,” she complained.  “I don’t know whether to treat Mrs. Denby as a bereaved aunt, a non-existent family skeleton, or a released menace.  I dare say now, pretty soon, she and your uncle will be married.  Meanwhile, I suppose it is rather silly of me not to call and see if I can help her in any way.  After all, we do know her intimately, whether we want to or not, don’t we?  We meet her about all the time, even if she wasn’t motoring over to your uncle’s place in the summer when we stop there.”

So she went, being fundamentally kindly and fundamentally curious.  She spoke of the expedition as “a descent upon Fair Rosamund’s tower.”

The small, yellow-panelled drawing-room, where she awaited Mrs. Denby’s coming, was lit by a single silver vase-lamp under an orange shade and by a fire of thin logs, for the April evening was damp with a hesitant rain.  On the table, near the lamp, was a silver vase with three yellow tulips in it, and Cecil, wandering about, came upon a double photograph frame, back of the vase, that made her gasp.  She picked it up and stared at it.  Between the alligator edgings, facing each other obliquely, but with the greatest amity, were Mr. Thomas Denby in the fashion of ten years before, very handsome, very well-groomed, with the startled expression which any definite withdrawal from his potational pursuits was likely to produce upon his countenance, and her uncle-in-law, Mr. Henry McCain, also in the fashion of ten years back.  She was holding the photographs up to the light, her lips still apart, when she heard a sound behind her, and, putting the frame back guiltily, turned about.  Mrs. Denby was advancing toward her.  She seemed entirely unaware of Cecil’s malfeasance; she was smiling faintly; her hand was cordial, grateful.

“You are very good,” she murmured.  “Sit here by the fire.  We will have some tea directly.”

Cecil could not but admit that she was very lovely; particularly lovely in the black of her mourning, with her slim neck, rising up from its string of pearls, to a head small and like a delicate white-and-gold flower.  An extraordinarily well-bred woman, a sort of misty Du Maurier woman, of a type that had become almost non-existent, if ever it had existed in its perfection at all.  And, curiously enough, a woman whose beauty seemed to have been sharpened by many fine-drawn renunciations.  Now she looked at her hands as if expecting Cecil to say something.

“I think such calls as this are always very useless, but then—­”

“Exactly—­but then!  They mean more than anything else in the world, don’t they?  When one reaches fifty-five one is not always used to kindness....  You are very kind....”  She raised her eyes.

Cecil experienced a sudden impulsive warmth.  “After all, what did she or any one else know about other peoples’ lives?  Poor souls!  What a base thing life often was!”