She evidently knows what her ladyship ought to buy—­what can be trusted not to overpower her faded fragility.  The saleswomen, even if they had not been devoured by alert curiosity, could not have avoided seeing that her ladyship did not seem to know what should be bought, and that Miss Vanderpoel did, though she did not direct her sister’s selection, but merely seemed to suggest with delicate restraint.  Her taste was wonderfully perceptive.  The things bought were exquisite, but a little colourless woman could wear them all with advantage to her restrictions of type.

As the brougham drove down Bond Street, Betty called Lady Anstruthers’ attention to more than one passer-by.

“Look, Rosy,” she said.  “There is Mrs. Treat Hilyar in the second carriage to the right.  You remember Josie Treat Hilyar married Lord Varick’s son.”

In the landau designated an elderly woman with wonderfully-dressed white hair sat smiling and bowing to friends who were walking.  Lady Anstruthers, despite her eagerness, shrank back a little, hoping to escape being seen.

“Oh, it is the Lows she is speaking to—­Tom and Alice—­I did not know they had sailed yet.”

The tall, well-groomed young man, with the nice, ugly face, was showing white teeth in a gay smile of recognition, and his pretty wife was lightly waving a slim hand in a grey suede glove.

“How cheerful and nice-tempered they look,” said Rosy.  “Tom was only twenty when I saw him last.  Whom did he marry?”

“An English girl.  Such a love.  A Devonshire gentleman’s daughter.  In New York his friends called her Devonshire Cream and Roses.  She is one of the pretty, flushy, pink ones.”

“How nice Bond Street is on a spring morning like this,” said Lady Anstruthers.  “You may laugh at me for saying it, Betty, but somehow it seems to me more spring-like than the country.”

“How clever of you!” laughed Betty.  “There is so much truth in it.”  The people walking in the sunshine were all full of spring thoughts and plans.  The colours they wore, the flowers in the women’s hats and the men’s buttonholes belonged to the season.  The cheerful crowds of people and carriages had a sort of rushing stir of movement which suggested freshness.  Later in the year everything looks more tired.  Now things were beginning and everyone was rather inclined to believe that this year would be better than last.  “Look at the shop windows,” said Betty, “full of whites and pinks and yellows and blues—­the colours of hyacinth and daffodil beds.  It seems as if they insist that there never has been a winter and never will be one.  They insist that there never was and never will be anything but spring.”

“It’s in the air.”  Lady Anstruthers’ sigh was actually a happy one.  “It is just what I used to feel in April when we drove down Fifth Avenue.”

Among the crowds of freshly-dressed passers-by, women with flowery hats and light frocks and parasols, men with touches of flower-colour on the lapels of their coats, and the holiday look in their faces, she noted so many of a familiar type that she began to look for and try to pick them out with quite excited interest.