eant to ask you
to stay on here quietly and look after the Fulmer children. Fulmer and
I are going to Spain next week--I want to be with him when he makes his
studies, receives his first impressions; such a marvellous experience,
to be there when he and Velasquez meet!" She broke off, lost in
prospective ecstasy. "And, you see, as Grace Fulmer insists on coming
with us--"

"Ah, I see."

"Well, there are the five children--such a problem," sighed the
benefactress. "If you were at a loose end, you know, dear, while Nick's
away with his friends, I could really make it worth your while...."

"So awfully good of you, Violet; only I'm not, as it happens."

Oh the relief of being able to say that, gaily, firmly and even
truthfully! Take charge of the Fulmer children, indeed! Susy remembered
how Nick and she had fled from them that autumn afternoon in New
Hampshire. The offer gave her a salutary glimpse of the way in which, as
the years passed, and she lost her freshness and novelty, she would more
and more be used as a convenience, a stop-gap, writer of notes, runner
of errands, nursery governess or companion. She called to mind several
elderly women of her acquaintance, pensioners of her own group, who
still wore its livery, struck its attitudes and chattered its jargon,
but had long since been ruthlessly relegated to these slave-ant offices.
Never in the world would she join their numbers.

Mrs. Melrose's face fell, and she looked at Susy with the plaintive
bewilderment of the wielder of millions to whom everything that cannot
be bought is imperceptible.

"But I can't see why you can't change your plans," she murmured with a
soft persistency.

"Ah, well, you know"--Susy paused on a slow inward smile--"they're not
mine only, as it happens."

Mrs. Melrose's brow clouded. The unforeseen complication of Mrs.
Fulmer's presence on the journey had evidently tried her nerves, and
this new obstacle to her arrangements shook her faith in the divine
order of things.

"Your plans are not yours only? But surely you won't let Ursula Gillow
dictate to you?... There's my jade pendant; the one you said you liked
the other day.... The Fulmers won't go with me, you understand, unless
they're satisfied about the children; the whole plan will fall
through. Susy darling, you were always too unselfish; I hate to see you
sacrificed to Ursula."

Susy's smile lingered. Time was when she might have been glad to add
the jade pendant to th