d possessions we have at
times almost turned pale.

"Them!" chaffed a costermonger over his barrow. "Blimme, if some o' them
blokes won't buy Buckin'am Pallis an' the 'ole R'yal Fambly some mornin'
when they're out shoppin'."

The subservient attendants in more than one fashionable shop Betty and
her sister visit, know that Miss Vanderpoel is of the circle, though her
father has not as yet bought or hired any great estate, and his daughter
has not been seen in London.

"Its queer we've never heard of her being presented," one shopgirl says
to another. "Just you look at her."

She evidently knows what her ladyship ought to buy--what can be trusted
not to overpower her faded fragility. The saleswomen, even if they had
not been devoured by alert curiosity, could not have avoided seeing that
her ladyship did not seem to know what should be bought, and that Miss
Vanderpoel did, though she did not direct her sister's selection,
but merely seemed to suggest with delicate restraint. Her taste was
wonderfully perceptive. The things bought were exquisite, but a little
colourless woman could wear them all with advantage to her restrictions
of type.

As the brougham drove down Bond Street, Betty called Lady Anstruthers'
attention to more than one passer-by.

"Look, Rosy," she said. "There is Mrs. Treat Hilyar in the second
carriage to the right. You remember Josie Treat Hilyar married Lord
Varick's son."

In the landau designated an elderly woman with wonderfully-dressed
white hair sat smiling and bowing to friends who were walking. Lady
Anstruthers, despite her eagerness, shrank back a little, hoping to
escape being seen.

"Oh, it is the Lows she is speaking to--Tom and Alice--I did not know
they had sailed yet."

The tall, well-groomed young man, with the nice, ugly face, was showing
white teeth in a gay smile of recognition, and his pretty wife was
lightly waving a slim hand in a grey suede glove.

"How cheerful and nice-tempered they look," said Rosy. "Tom was only
twenty when I saw him last. Whom did he marry?"

"An English girl. Such a love. A Devonshire gentleman's daughter. In New
York his friends called her Devonshire Cream and Roses. She is one of
the pretty, flushy, pink ones."

"How nice Bond Street is on a spring morning like this," said Lady
Anstruthers. "You may laugh at me for saying it, Betty, but somehow it
seems to me more spring-like than the country."

"How clever of you!" laughed Betty. "Ther