Page:The Plutocrat (1927).pdf/146

 essentially are is wolfish. To me it's rather a painful sight."

"You aren't compelled to look at it," Macklyn suggested. "There's something else in the place."

"Thank you," Mr. Jones said gratefully. "I'm trying my best not to let her know how much too well aware I am of that fact. How old do you suppose she really is?"

"I don't suppose. A few women in every century forbid such suppositions: the Empress Elizabeth, Ninon, Diane de Poictiers"

"Eve, herself, no doubt," the painter added, "to say nothing of the wife of Menelaus. Madame Momoro looks twenty-six or a glorious thirty, as you choose, but can't easily be under thirty-eight if she's the mother of the full-grown youth travelling with her; and I should say there's no question but that he's her son—he looks it perfectly, and she called him 'Bébé.' Probably she's forty; she might be more. Without any doubt at all, she's years and years older than Ogle—as much as ten or twelve probably."

"So? Well, he doesn't know that," Macklyn observed. "He doesn't know anything except that she's listening to him. She's a woman who casts a spell, and he's spellbound; no question. I'm not an