They moved on out of hearing, but the breeze of her fan had touched the arching hair on Lady Maiden's forehead, the down on her upper lip.
"Why isn't she with her husband ?" she asked abruptly.
Mrs.Pendyce lifted her brows.
"Do you concern yourself to ask that which a well-bred woman leaves unanswered ?" she seemed to say, and a flush coloured her cheeks.
Lady Maiden winced, but, as though it were forced through her mouth by some explosion in her soul, she said: "You have only to look and see how dangerous she is!" The colour in Mrs.Pendyce's cheeks deepened to a blush like a girl's.
"Every man," she said, "is in love with Helen Bellew.

She's so tremendously alive.

My cousin Gregory has been in love with her for years, though he is her guardian or trustee, or whatever they call them now.

It's quite romantic.

If I were a man I should be in love with her myself." The flush vanished and left her cheeks to their true colour, that of a faded rose.
Once more she was listening to the voice of young Trefane, "Ah, Margery, I love you!"-- to her own half whispered answer, "Poor boy!" Once more she was looking back through that forest of her life where she had wandered so long, and where every tree was Horace Pendyce.
"What a pity one can't always be young!" she said.
Through the conservatory door, wide open to the lawn, a full moon flooded the country with pale gold light, and in that light the branches of the cedar-trees seemed printed black on the grey-blue paper of the sky; all was cold, still witchery out there, and not very far away an owl was hooting.
The Reverend Husell Barter, about to enter the conservatory for a breath of air, was arrested by the sight of a couple half-hidden by a bushy plant; side by side they were looking at the moonlight, and he knew them for Mrs.Bellew and George Pendyce.