“Yes,” said Sheila.

She had not enjoyed her luncheon much—­she would rather have had a ham sandwich and a glass of spring water on the side of a Highland hill than this varied and fastidious repast accompanied by a good deal of physiology—­but it was too bad that, having successfully got through it, she should be threatened with annihilation immediately afterward.  It was no sort of consolation to her to know that she would be in the same plight with two emperors.

“Frank, you can go and smoke a cigar in the conservatory if you please.  Your wife will come up stairs with me and have a talk.”

Sheila would much rather have gone into the conservatory also, but she obediently followed Mrs. Lavender up stairs and into the drawing-room.  It was rather a melancholy chamber, the curtains shutting out most of the daylight, and leaving you in a semi-darkness that made the place look big and vague and spectral.  The little, shriveled woman, with the hard and staring eyes and silver-gray hair, bade Sheila sit down beside her.  She herself sat by a small table, on which there were a tiny pair of scales, a bottle of ammonia, a fan, and a book bound in an old-fashioned binding of scarlet morocco and gold.  Sheila wished this old woman would not look at her so.  She wished there was a window open or a glint of sunlight coming in somewhere.  But she was glad that her husband was enjoying himself in the conservatory; and that for two reasons.  One of them was, that she did not like the tone of his talk while he and his aunt had been conversing together about cosmetics and such matters.  Not only did he betray a marvelous acquaintance with such things, but he seemed to take an odd sort of pleasure in exhibiting his knowledge.  He talked about the tricks of fashionable women in a mocking way that Sheila did not quite like; and of course she naturally threw the blame on Mrs. Lavender.  It was only when this old lady exerted a godless influence over him that her good boy talked in such a fashion.  There was nothing of that about him up in Lewis, nor yet at home in a certain snug little smoking-room which these two had come to consider the most comfortable corner in the house.  Sheila began to hate women who used lip-salve, and silently recorded a vow that never, never, never would she wear anybody’s hair but her own.

“Do you suffer from headaches?” said Mrs. Lavender abruptly.

“Sometimes,” said Sheila.

“How often?  What is an average?  Two a week?”

“Oh, sometimes I have not a head-ache for three or four months at a time.”

“No toothache?”

“No.”

“What did your mother die of?”

“It was a fever,” said Sheila in a low voice, “and she caught it while she was helping a family that was very bad with the fever.”

“Does your father ever suffer from rheumatism?”

“No,” said Sheila.  “My papa is the strongest man in the Lewis—­I am sure of that.”