know Mrs Fanshawe, don't you? Isn't she charming? She and I are the
greatest of chums. I always say she has never succeeded in growing
older than seventeen. She is so delightfully irresponsible and
impulsive. She wrote mother a charming letter about you. It made us
quite anxious to meet you, but you know what town life is--a continual
rush! Everything gets put off."

"It was awfully good of you to ask me at all, and very kind of Mrs
Fanshawe to write. I only know her in the most casual way. We crossed
over from Antwerp together, and her maid was ill, and I was able to be
of some use, and when she heard that I was coming to work in London and
that I knew nobody here--she--"

Jane Willoughby stared in frank amazement.

"Do you really mean that that was all? You met her only that one time?
You know nothing of her home or her people?"

"Only that time. I hope--I hope you don't think--"

Claire suffered an anxious moment before she realised that for some
unexplained reason Miss Willoughby was more pleased than annoyed by the
intelligence. An air of something extraordinarily like relief passed
over her features. She laughed gaily and said--

"I don't think anything at all except that it is delightfully like Mrs
Fanshawe. She wrote as if she had known you for ages. As a matter of
fact she probably _does_ know you quite well. She is so extraordinarily
quick and clever, that she crowds as much life into an hour as an
ordinary person does into a week. She told us that you had chosen to
come to London to work, rather than go to India and have a good time.
How plucky of you! And you teach at one of the big High Schools... You
don't look in the least like a school-mistress."

"Ah! I'm off duty to-night! You should see me in the morning, in my
working clothes. You should see me at night, correcting exercises on
the dining-table in a lodging-house parlour, and cooking sausages in a
chafing-dish for our evening meal. I `dig' with the English mistress,
and do most of our cooking myself, as the landlady's tastes and ours
don't agree. I'm getting to be quite an expert at manufacturing
sixpenny dainties."

Janet Willoughby breathed a deep sigh; the diamond star on her neck sent
out vivid gleams of light.

"What fun!" she sighed enviously. "What fun!" and as she spoke there
flashed suddenly before the eyes of her listener a picture of the
English mistress lying on the green plush sofa, her shabby slippers