Her first essays were charitably received.  Her years of struggle, her year of mourning, had no doubt dwarfed her powers in this direction; presently her natural good taste would reassert itself.  But the next effort and the next were harder to explain.  It was not the note of nervousness or inexperience we saw; there was an undeniable decision, and not a token of shame.  The little black winter bud grew warm-coloured above, and burst suddenly into extravagant outlines and chromatic confusion.  Harringay, who is a cad, first put what we were all feeling into words.  “I’ve just seen Dunstone and his donah,” he said.  Clearly she was one of those rare women who cannot dress.  And that was not all.  A certain buoyancy, hitherto unsuspected, crept into her manner, as the corpuscles multiplied in her veins—­an archness.  She talked more, and threw up a spray of playfulness.  And, with a growing energy, she began to revise the exquisite aesthetic balance of Dunstone’s house.  She even enamelled a chair.

For a year or so I was in the East.  When I returned Mrs. Dunstone amazed me.  In some odd way she had grown, she had positively grown.  She was taller, broader, brighter—­infinitely brighter.  She wore a diamond brooch in the afternoon.  The “delicious skeleton” had vanished in plumpness.  She moved with emphasis.  Her eye—­which glittered—­met mine bravely, and she talked as one who would be heard.  In the old days you saw nothing but a rare timid glance from under the pretty lids.  She talked now of this and that, of people of “good family,” and the difficulty of getting a suitable governess for her little boy.  She said she objected to meeting people “one would not care to invite to one’s house.”  She swamped me with tea and ruled the conversation, so that Dunstone and I, who were once old friends, talked civil twaddle for the space of one hour—­theatres, concerts, and assemblies chiefly—­and then parted again.  The furniture had all been altered—­there were two “cosy nooks” in the room after the recipe in the Born Lady.  It was plain to me, it is plain to everyone, I find, that Mrs. Dunstone is, in the sun of prosperity, rapidly developing an extremely florid vulgarity.  And afterwards I discovered that she had forgotten her music, and evidently enjoyed her meals.  Yet I for one can witness that five years ago there was that about her—­I can only extend my arm with quivering digits.  But it was something very sweet and dainty, something that made her white and thoughtful, and marked her off from the rest of womankind.  I sometimes fancy it may have been anaemia in part, but it was certainly poverty and mourning in the main.

You may think that this is a story of disillusionment.  When I first heard the story, I thought so too.  But, so far as Dunstone goes, that is not the case.  It is rare that I see him now, but the other day we smoked two cigars apiece together.  And in a moment of confidence he spoke of her.  He said how anxious he felt for her health, called her his “Dainty Little Lady,” and spoke of the coarseness of other women.  I am afraid this is not a very eventful story, and yet there is that——­That very convenient gesture, an arm protruded and flickering fingers, conveys my meaning best.  Perhaps you will understand.