I replied, briefly and succinctly: “Wouldn’t I?”
“Ha!” exclaimed the Professor, “I thought so!”
“But I should have liked him to have begun earlier,” I said. “Twenty-nine is a nice age, now.... It is the age we all try to stop at, and can’t, however much we try. Look there!”
A landau limousine, dark blue, beautifully varnished, nickel-plated, and upholstered in cream-white leather, came gliding gracefully through the press of vehicles. From the crest upon the panel to the sober workmanlike livery of the chauffeur, the turn-out was perfection. The pearl it contained was worthy of the setting.
“Look there?” I repeated, as the rose-cheeked, sapphire-eyed, smiling vision passed, wrapped in a voluminous coat of chinchilla and silver fox, with a toque of Parma violets under the shimmer of the silken veil that could only temper the burning glory of her wonderful Renaissance hair.
“There’s the exception to the rule.... There’s a woman who doesn’t need the aid of science or of Art to keep her at nine and twenty. There’s a woman in whom ‘the wear and tear of nerve and muscle, tissue and bone’ goes on—if it does go on—imperceptibly. Her blood doesn’t seem to be much deteriorated by the microbe of old age, Professor, does it? And she’s forty-three! The alchemistical forty-three, that turns the gold of life back into lead! The gold remains gold in her case, for that hair, that complexion, that figure, are,” I solemnly declared, “her own.”
At that moment Lady Clanbevan gave a smiling gracious nod to the Professor, and he responded with a cold, grave bow. The glow of her gorgeous hair, the liquid sapphire of her eyes, were wasted on this stony man of science. She passed, going home to Stanhope Gate, I suppose, in which neighborhood she has a house; I had barely a moment to notice the white-bonneted, blue-cloaked nurse on the front of the landau, holding a bundle of laces and cashmeres, and to reflect that I have never yet seen Lady Clanbevan taking the air out of the society of a baby, when the Professor spoke:
“So Lady Clanbevan is the one woman who has no need of the aid of Art or science to preserve her beauty and maintain her appearance of youth? Supposing I could prove to you otherwise, my friend, what then?”