“Well, my dear,” said I.  “What do you think of my young savage from Asia Minor?”

Judith laughed—­I am sure not naturally.

“Is that all you wanted to say to me?”

She withdrew her hand, and tidied her hair in the mirror of the overmantel.

“I think she is a most uninteresting young woman.  I am disappointed.  I had anticipated something original.  I had looked forward to some amusement.  But, really, my dear Marcus, she is bete a pleurer—­weepingly stupid.”

“She certainly can weep,” said I.

“Oh, can she?” said Judith, as if the announcement threw some light on Carlotta’s character.  “And when she cries, I suppose you, like a man, give in and let her have her own way?” And Judith laughed again.

“My dear Judith,” said I; “you have no idea of the wholesome discipline at Lingfield Terrace.”

Suddenly with one of her disconcerting changes of front, she turned and caught me by the coat-lappels.

“Marcus dear, I have been so lonely this week.  When are you coming to see me?”

“We’ll have a whole day out on Sunday,” said I.

As I walked down the stairs with Carlotta, I reflected that Judith had not accounted for the red spots.

“I like her,” said Carlotta.  “She is a nice old lady.”

“Old lady!  What on earth do you mean?” I was indeed startled. 
“She is a young woman.”

“Pouf!” cried Carlotta.  “She is forty.”

“She is no such thing,” I cried.  “She is years younger than I.”

“She would not tell me.”

“You asked her age?”

“Oh, ye-es,” said Carlotta.  “I was very polite.  I first asked if she was married.  She said yes.  Then I asked how her husband was.  She said she didn’t know.  That was funny.  Why does she not know, Seer Marcous?”

“Never mind,” said I, “go on telling me how polite you were.”

“I asked how many children she had.  She said she had none.  I said it was a pity.  And then I said, ’I am eighteen years old and I want to marry quite soon and have children.  How old are you?’ And she would not tell me.  I said, ’You must be the same age as my mamma, if she were alive.’  I said other things, about her husband, which I forget.  Oh, I was very polite.”

She smiled up at me in quest of approbation.  I checked a horrified rebuke when I reflected that, according to the etiquette of the harem, she had been “very polite.”  But my poor Judith!  Every artless question had been a knife thrust in a sensitive spot.  Her husband:  the handsome blackguard who had lured her into the divorce court, married her, and after two unhappy years had left her broken; children:  they would have kept her life sweet, and did I not know how she had yearned for them?  Her age:  it is only the very happily married woman who snaps her fingers at the approach of forty, and even she does so with a disquieting sense of bravado.  And the sweet insolence of youth says:  “I am eighteen:  how old are you?”