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 "Why not?" said I, airily. The age wont identify her. There are plenty of women of thirty-five."

"Is she handsome?" asked Miss Lamb, with a smile. She was evidently amused at John's discomfiture.

"That is a question for you to answer, John," said I. "You're a better judge than I."

But instead of embarrassing him, this bold-faced attack on my part seemed to put John on his mettle, and he answered composedly: "She is very beautiful."

"Dark or fair?" asked Miss Lamb.

"A delicate blonde," John replied, with a perfectly straight face. "She has dreamy dark eyes but her skin is fair as a lily, and her hair is of that exquisite gold which seldom lasts into middle life. I have known her for years, and it seems to me she is as absolutely beautiful as she was when she was a girl."

"Very unlike one's idea of a middle-aged authoress," Mrs. Ellerton remarked; while Miss Lamb gave John a furtively