ger,
"you'll do what is reasonable. Your mother would wish--have you a
mother?"

A faint wonder came into Scrap's eyes. Have you a mother? If
ever anybody had a mother it was Scrap. It had not occurred to her
that there could be people who had never heard of her mother. She was
one of the major marchionesses--there being, as no one knew better than
Scrap, marchionesses and marchionesses--and had held high positions at
Court. Her father, too, in his day had been most prominent. His day
was a little over, poor dear, because in the war he had made some
important mistakes, and besides he was now grown old; still, there he
was, an excessively well-known person. How restful, how
extraordinarily restful to have found some one who had never heard of
any of her lot, or at least had not yet connected her with them.

She began to like Mrs. Fisher. Perhaps the originals didn't know
anything about her either. When she first wrote to them and signed her
name, that great name of Dester which twisted in and out of English
history like a bloody thread, for its bearers constantly killed, she
had taken it for granted that they would know who she was; and at the
interview of Shaftesbury Avenue she was sure they did know, because
they hadn't asked, as they otherwise would have, for references.

Scrap began to cheer up. If nobody at San Salvatore had ever
heard of her, if for a whole month she could shed herself, get right
away from everything connected with herself, be allowed really to
forget the clinging and the clogging and all the noise, why, perhaps
she might make something of herself after all. She might really think;
really clear up her mind; really come to some conclusion.

"What I want to do here," she said, leaning forward in her chair
and clasping her hands round her knees and looking up at Mrs. Fisher,
whose seat was higher than hers, almost with animation, so much pleased
was she that Mrs. Fisher knew nothing about her, "is to come to a
conclusion. That's all. It isn't much to want, is it? Just that."

She gazed at Mrs. Fisher, and thought that almost any conclusion
would do; the great thing was to get hold of something, catch something
tight, cease to drift.

Mrs. Fisher's little eyes surveyed her. "I should say," she
said, "that what a young woman like you wants is a husband and
children."

"Well, that's one of the things I'm going to consider," said
Scrap amiably. "But I don't think it would be a co