“You are looking wonderfully well,” he said, “and not quite fifty years old now.”

“I am hardly more than thirty,” I informed him, “and hope, if the weather keeps fine, to grow a little younger still.”

He said he was glad to hear it, and prayed I would let him come and see the process.

“One grows in the night, when one is asleep,” I said, “so no one can see it.  But if you would care to take tea with me in the afternoon, I shall be very pleased to see you.”

He came the next day.

We talked gravely, as was befitting my mourning.  He gave me news of my friends at Harley.

Lady Tilchester, he said, had a new scheme on hand for the employment of the returning volunteers whose places in business had been filled up in their absence.  She was absorbed in this undertaking, but when not too busy was more charming than ever.

“I spent a Sunday at Harley a couple of weeks ago.” he said.  “I don’t think many of the people were there that you met before—­none, I believe, but Sir Antony Thornhirst.”

“And how was he?” I tried to say as naturally as possible.

“He seemed in the best of health and spirits.  There is an intelligent person, if you like.  I wish he would enter Parliament.”

“But Sir Antony is a Tory, I understand, Mr. Budge!  He would be no use to you,” I said.

“Yes, indeed, he would.  We want some brilliancy just now in the House to wake us up.  It does not matter which side it comes from.”

“Don’t you think he is too casual to care enough about it?  He would not give himself the trouble to enter Parliament, I believe.”

“That is just it.  The ablest people are so lazy.  Lady Tilchester has often tried to persuade him, but he has some whimsical answer ready, and remains at large.”

I should like to have talked much more on this subject, but Mr. Budge changed the conversation.  He drifted into saying some personal things which did not quite please me, considering my mourning.  They were not in perfect taste.  I remembered how in the beginning I had not liked his hands.  One’s first instincts are generally right.

When he had gone I said to myself I should not care to see him any more.

In Paris one finds a hundred things to do and to buy if one happens suddenly to have become a rich widow, as is my case.  My few days stretched themselves into a week.

I had a letter from the Marquis de Rochermont.  He was returning to his tiny apartments in the Rue de Varennes the following day, after a fortnight’s absence, he told me.  The dear old Marquis!  I should be glad to see him again.  He must be a very old man now, almost eighty, although he was several years grandmamma’s junior.

He would lunch with me with pleasure, he said, and at one next day arrived in my sitting-room.  He looked just as he used to do at first, but soon I noticed his gayety was gone.  He seemed frail and older.  He had deeply grieved for grandmamma.