“Certainly it does,” answered Constance, noting a pathetic self-subdual in the old lady’s look and tone.  “For a girl, it means a good deal.”

“You think so?” The bony hands were restless and tremulous; the dark eyes glistened.  “It isn’t quite ordinary, is it?  But then, of course, it tells nothing about her character.  She is coming to stay for a day or two coming on Saturday.  If I don’t like her, no harm’s done.  Back she goes to her people, that’s all—­her mother’s family—­I know nothing about them, and care less.  At all events, she looks endurable—­don’t you think?”

“Much more than that,” said Constance.  “A very nice girl, I should imagine.”

“Ha!  You mean that?—­Of course you do, or you wouldn’t say it.  But then, if she’s only a ’nice girl’—­pooh!  She ought to be more than that.  What’s the use of a photograph?  Every photo ever taken of me made me look a simpering idiot.”

This was by no means true, but Lady Ogram had always been a bad sitter to the camera, and had destroyed most of its results.  The oil painting in the dining-room she regarded with a moderate complacency.  Many a time during the latter years of withering and enfeeblement her memory had turned to that shining head in marble, which was hidden away amid half a century’s dust under the roof at Rivenoak.  There, and there only, survived the glory of her youth, when not the face alone, but all her faultless body made the artist’s rapture.

“Well,” she said, abruptly, “you’ll see the girl.  Her name is May Tomalin.  You’re not obliged to like her.  You’re not obliged to tell me what you think of her.  Most likely I shan’t ask you.—­By the bye, I had a letter from Dyce Lashmar this morning.”

“Indeed?” said the other, with a careless smile.

“I like his way of writing.  It’s straight-forward and sharp-cut, like his talk.  A man who means what he says, and knows how to say it; that’s a great deal nowadays.”

Constance assented with all good-humour to Lady Ogram’s praise.

“You must answer him for me,” the old lady continued.  “No need, of course, to show me what you write; just put it into a letter of your own.”

“I hardly think I shall be writing to Mr. Lashmar,” said Miss Bride, very quietly.

“Do you mean that?”

Their eyes met’ and Constance bore the other’s gaze without flinching.

“We are not such great friends, Lady Ogram.  You will remember I told you that I knew him but slightly.”

“All right.  It has nothing to do with me, whether you’re friends or not.  You can answer as my secretary, I suppose?”

And Lady Ogram, with her uncertain, yet not undignified, footfall, went straightway from the room.  There was a suspicion of needless sound as the door closed behind her.

Constance sat for a minute or two in a very rigid attitude, displeasure manifest on her lips.  She did not find it easy to get to work again, and when the time came for her bicycle ride, she was in no mind for it, but preferred to sit over a book.  At luncheon Lady Ogram inclined to silence.  Later in the day, however, they met on the ordinary terms of mutual understanding, and Constance, after speaking of other things, asked whether she should write Lady Ogram’s reply to Mr. Lashmar.