pleasant, restrained smile and made the acquaintance of Charlie's
family; but she was not talkative. Her presence, coming as a terrific
surprise to the ladies of the Prohack family, and as a fairly powerful
surprise to Mr. Prohack, completed the general constraint. Mrs. Prohack
indeed was somewhat intimidated by it. Mrs. Prohack's knowledge of Lady
Massulam was derived exclusively from _The Daily Picture_, where her
portrait was constantly appearing, on all sorts of pretexts, and where
she was described as a leader of London society. Mr. Prohack knew of her
as a woman credited with great feats of war-work, and also with a
certain real talent for organisation; further, he had heard that she had
a gift for high finance, and exercised it not without profit. As she
happened to be French by birth, no steady English person was seriously
upset by the fact that her matrimonial career was obscure, and as she
happened to be very rich everybody raised sceptical eyebrows at the
assertion that her husband (a knight) was dead; for _The Daily Picture_
implanted daily in the minds of millions of readers the grand truth that
to the very rich nothing can happen simply. The whole _Daily Picture_
world was aware that of late she had lived at the Grand Babylon Hotel in
permanence. That world would not have recognised her from her published
portraits, which were more historical than actual. Although
conspicuously anti-Victorian she had a Victorian beauty of the
impressive kind; she had it still. Her hair was of a dark lustrous brown
and showed no grey. In figure she was tall, and rather more than plump
and rather less than fat. Her perfect and perfectly worn clothes proved
that she knew just how to deal with herself. She would look forty in a
theatre, fifty in a garden, and sixty to her maid at dawn.

This important person spoke, when she did speak, with a scarcely
perceptible French accent in a fine clear voice. But she spoke little
and said practically nothing: which was a shock to Marian Prohack, who