Mrs. Pevenly had finished her breakfast at about half-past nine, by which hour her daughter had not put in an appearance; as the hostess and most of the members of the house-party were equally late, Beryl’s slackness could not be regarded as a social sin, but her mother thought it was a pity to lose so much of the fine October morning. Beryl Pevenly had been described by someone as the “Flapper incarnate,” and the label summed her up accurately. Her mother already recognised that she was disposed to be a law unto herself; what she did not yet realise was that Beryl was extremely likely to be a lawgiver to any weaker character with whom she might come in contact. “She is only a child yet,” Mrs. Pevenly would say to herself, forgetting that seventeen and seventy are about the two most despotic ages of human life.