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 'It's so rough on their husbands, I always think,' she went on gaily. 'No husband likes to see his wife going about in a dressing-gown. It's a poor sort of compliment to pay him to appear before him like that all day, and then deck one's self out in one's best for other people at the club at night. Besides, it's a thing that grows on one out here. Once get to the dressing-gown stage and you're lost. You get soft and lazy, and you end by letting everything go. The house goes, the affection of your husband and your children goes, and, worst of all, your figure goes. I know my figure is going,' added Berengaria quickly, 'but it isn't because I've got to the dressing-gown stage.'

I longed to ask her why, then, it was, but again I thought I'd better not. Then I suddenly remembered. It was a beautiful pink silk dressing-gown, lined of course with flannel, that Aunt Agatha had sent by me for Berengaria. How unfortunate that we should have got on to the subject of dressing-gowns in an abusive sort of style straight away. Still, it was such a very fascinating dressing-gown that lay reposing in one of my trunks that I felt it capable of turning any woman's heart of stone. 'Now I confess a great weakness for dressing-gowns,' I put out as a sort of feeler, 'provided, of course, they are worn at the right time and in the right place.'

But Berengaria was firm.

'I don't think there is any right time or right place for such a thing,' she said.