at she had probably partaken
heartily of the good fare provided, more particularly as a few stray
crumbs still clung about the corners of her lips, betraying to his
experienced eye the unconscious eagerness which healthy people
habitually show over their meals. Wisely he did not infer from these
evidences of a youthful and unimpaired appetite that she was slovenly in
her table manners, because the unmistakable gentleness of her upbringing
precluded any such possibility. The observation merely confirmed his
general impression of her, and left him pondering over the relationship
of daintiness to health.

Drowsily the girl re-opened the letter which she had been perusing
before the luncheon hour, and re-read it once or twice; then dropping it
listlessly upon her lap, she turned upon her fellow-passengers a look of
such guileless interest that they might have been excused had they been
moved by that compassion, so frequently unwarranted, for innocence on
the threshold of Life's great adventure.

The letter she held had been brought to her that morning by Vanessa's
maid. Leonetta and Vanessa had made friends the moment they first met,
and when Vanessa, duly qualified, had left the School of Domesticity,
about six months after Leonetta's arrival there, they had continued to
see each other outside its walls. There was a difference of only a year
in their ages, Vanessa being the elder; but the younger girl with her
greater keenness of vision, more exuberant health and spirits, and more
resolute unscrupulosity, had so carried the heart of the other by storm
that it was Vanessa, the provincial termagant, who looked up to and
worshipped her sister dare-devil of the Metropolis, and who watched her
for her every cue.

The train was nearing London; already the coquettish veil of smoke with
which the "hub of the Universe" conceals the full horror of her ugliness
from the eyes of critics, gave the summer sky a murky yellow tinge.
Leonetta yawned, glanced across the vast city which she hoped would
hence-forward be her home, and then suddenly recollecting that her
mother and sister would probably be at King's Cross to meet her, quickly
folded the letter that was lying on her lap and relegated it to one of
the interstices of her pocket-portfolio.

CHAPTER V

Leonetta was home again and the old house in Kensington felt the change
acutely. The stairs creaked in a manner almost indignant; doors which
for months had disported th