hair brushed sternly back, and every inch of her body trained to the
purpose that it was meant to fulfil. She rang her sentences on the air
like coin on a plate. Meanwhile, as she explained to Rachel, she had
been fighting since she was five. Her mother, Lady Eversley, was the
widow of Tom Eversley, now happily deceased, once the most dissolute
scamp in Europe. He had died leaving nothing but debts behind him. Since
then his widow and his daughter had lived in three little rooms above a
public house off Shepherd's Market, and the widow had battled to keep up
the gayest of appearances. May had been, at a very early age, introduced
to the struggle. "My silver mug and rattle were pawned to get a dress
for mother to go to a drawing-room in. I shouldn't be here now if it
weren't for an uncle, and it's the last thing he'll do for us. So back I
go in two year's time--to do my damnedest."

Of course she was clear-headed--she had to be.

"There are only two sorts of people," she said to Rachel. "Like
soup--thick and clear--the Clear ones get on and the Thick don't."

May obviously liked Rachel, but was amused by her. Nobody, it seemed to
May, showed so nakedly her emotions as Rachel, and yet, also, nobody
could produce, more suddenly, the closest of reserves. May, to whom the
world had been, since she was six, a measured plain of contest,
marvelled at the poignancy of Rachel's contact with it. "If she's going
to be hurt as easily as this by everything, how on earth is she going to
get through?"

Then, as the Munich days passed, May found, to her own delight, Rachel's
keen sense of humour. Munich afforded enough food for it, and finally
one discovered that Rachel smiled more readily than she trembled, but
she hid her smile because, as yet, she was not sure of it.

"All she wants," May Eversley concluded, "is to be told things."

Nobody in the world could be better adapted to give out these
revelations. London, to May Eversley, was an open book; moreover, the
most stormy of battle-fields on which the combatants fought, were
wounded, were slain, were gloriously victorious.

She told Rachel a great deal--a great deal about people, a great deal
about sets and parties, a great deal about likes and dislikes. She had
on her side one burning curiosity to know about Rachel's Duchess. "Is
she as terrible, so tremendous as people say? Has she such a brain even
now? Old Lady Grandon, who was a great friend when they were both girls,