another part of the house Miss Rand, Lady
Adela's secretary, finished her work for the day, and prepared to go
home.

It was about a quarter-past six, and the May evening was sending through
the windows its pale glow suggesting soft blue skies and fading lights.
Miss Rand's room told you at once everything about Miss Rand. For
efficiency and neatness, for discipline and restraint, it could not be
beaten. Miss Rand herself was all these things, efficient and neat,
disciplined and restrained.

Her room had against one white and shining wall a black and shining
typewriter. Against another wall was a table, and on this table were so
many contrivances for keeping letters and papers decent and docketed
that it made every other table the observer could remember seem untidy
and littered. There was nothing in the room superfluous or unnecessary,
and even some carnations in a green bowl near the window looked as
though they were numbered and ticketed.

Miss Rand was a little woman who appeared thirty-five when she was busy,
and twenty-five when someone was pleasant to her. When she was at work
the broad dark belt that she wore at her waist was her most
characteristic feature. Then, in keeping with this, was her dark hair,
beautiful hair perhaps if it had been allowed some freedom, but now
ordered and sternly disciplined; she wore no ornaments, and about her
there was nothing out of place nor extravagant.

Her face was full of light and colour and her eyes were beautiful, but
no one considered them: it was impossible to look beyond that stern
shining belt--one felt that Miss Rand herself would resent appreciation.

From ten o'clock in the morning until five o'clock in the evening the
huge Portland Place house absorbed her energies. She saw it sometimes in
her dreams, as a great unwieldy machine kept in place by her hand, but
leaping, did she leave it for an instant, trembling, soaring, carrying
destruction with it into the heart of the city.

Meanwhile her hand was upon it. From Norris the butler, from Dorchester
the guardian of the Duchess's apartments, down to the smallest, most
insignificant kitchen-maid, Miss Rand knew them all. There was, of
course, Mrs. Newton, the most splendid and elevating of housekeepers,
but when matters below stairs went beyond her control Miss Rand could
always arrange them. There was nothing, absolutely nothing, that, in the
way of managing her fellow-creatures, Miss Rand could not do.

But i