My dear Ewen, do you know what I discovered last night ?" Mrs.Hooper rose and stood over her husband impressively.
"Well--what ?" "You remember Connie went to bed early.

Well, when I came up, and passed her door, I noticed something--somebody in that room was--smoking! I could not be mistaken.

And this morning I questioned the housemaid.
'Yes, ma'am,' she said, 'her ladyship smoked two cigarettes last night, and Mrs.Tinkler'-- that's the maid--'says she always smokes two before she goes to bed.' Then I spoke to Tinkler--whose manner to me, I consider, is not at all what it should be--and she said that Connie smoked three cigarettes a day always--that Lady Risborough smoked--that all the ladies in Rome smoked--that Connie began it before her mother died--and her mother didn't mind--" "Well then, my dear, you needn't mind," exclaimed Dr.Hooper.
"I always thought Ella Risborough went to pieces--rather--in that dreadful foreign life," said Mrs.Hooper firmly.

"Everybody does--you can't help it." "I don't know what you mean by going 'to pieces,'" said Ewen Hooper warmly.

"I only know that when they came here ten years ago, I thought her one of the most attractive--one of the most charming women I had ever seen." From where he stood, on the hearth-rug of his study, smoking an after-breakfast pipe, he looked down--frowning--upon his wife, and Mrs.
Hooper felt that she had perhaps gone too far.