PATRICIA BRENT, SPINSTER

CHAPTER I

PATRICIA'S INDISCRETION

"She never has anyone to take her out, and goes nowhere, and yet she
can't be more than twenty-seven, and really she's not bad-looking."

"It's not looks that attract men," there was a note of finality in the
voice; "it's something else." The speaker snapped off her words in a
tone that marked extreme disapproval.

"What else?" enquired the other voice.

"Oh, it's--well, it's something not quite nice," replied the other
voice darkly, "the French call it being _tres femme_. However, she
hasn't got it."

"Well, I feel very sorry for her and her loneliness. I am sure she
would be much happier if she had a nice young man of her own class to
take her about."

Patricia Brent listened with flaming cheeks. She felt as if someone
had struck her. She recognised herself as the object of the speakers'
comments. She could not laugh at the words, because they were true.
She _was_ lonely, she had no men friends to take her about, and yet,
and yet----

"Twenty-seven," she muttered indignantly, "and I was only twenty-four
last November."

She identified the two speakers as Miss Elizabeth Wangle and Mrs.
Mosscrop-Smythe.

Miss Wangle was the great-niece of a bishop, and to have a bishop in
heaven is a great social asset on earth. This ecclesiastical
distinction seemed to give her the right of leadership at the Galvin
House Residential Hotel. Whenever a new boarder arrived, the
unfortunate bishop was disinterred and brandished before his eyes.

One facetious young man in the "commercial line" had dubbed her "the
body-snatcher," and, being inordinately proud of his _jeu d'esprit_, he
had worn it threadbare, and Miss Wangle had got to know of it. The
result was the sudden departure of the wit. Miss Wangle had intimated
to Mrs. Craske-Morton, the proprietress, that if he remained she would
go. Mrs. Craske-Morton considered that Miss Wangle gave tone to Galvin
House.

Miss Wangle was acid of speech and barren of pity. Scandal and "the
dear bishop" were her chief preoccupations. She regularly read _The
Morning Post_, which she bought, and _The Times_, which she borrowed.
In her attitude towards royalty she was a Jacobite, and of the
aristocracy she knew no wrong.

Mrs. Mosscrop-Smythe was Miss Wangle's toady; but she wrapped her venom
in Christian charity, thus making herself the more dangerous of the two.

At Galvin House none dare gain