sonalities to which it was
attracted, Mrs. Ilkington had a heart--sentiment and a capacity for
sympathetic affection. She had met Eleanor Searle in Paris, and knew a
little more than something of the struggle the girl had been making to
prepare herself for the operatic stage. She managed to discover that she
had no close friends in New York, and shrewdly surmised that she wasn't
any too well provided with munitions of war--in the shape of money--for
her contemplated campaign against the army of professional people,
marshalled by indifferent-minded managers, which stood between her and
the place she coveted.

Considering all this, Mrs. Ilkington had suggested, with an accent of
insistence, that Eleanor should go to the hotel which she intended to
patronise--wording her suggestion so cunningly that it would be an easy
matter for her, when the time came, to demonstrate that she had invited
the girl to be her guest. And with this she was thoughtful enough to
select an unpretentious if thoroughly well-managed house on the West
Side, in the late Seventies, in order that Eleanor might feel at ease
and not worry about the size of the bill which she wasn't to be
permitted to pay.

Accordingly the two ladies (with Mr. Bangs tagging) went from the pier
directly to the St. Simon, the elder woman to stay until her town-house
could be opened and put in order, the girl while she looked round for a
spinster's studio or a small apartment within her limited means.

Promptly on their arrival at the hotel, Mrs. Ilkington began to run up a
telephone bill, notifying friends of her whereabouts; with the result
(typical of the New York idea) that within an hour she had engaged
herself for a dinner with theatre and supper to follow--and, of course,
had managed to have Eleanor included in the invitation. She was one of
those women who live on their nerves and apparently thrive on
excitement, ignorant of the meaning of rest save in association with
those rest-cure sanatoriums to which they repair for a fortnight
semi-annually--or oftener.

Against her protests, then, Eleanor was dragged out in full dress when
what she really wanted to do was to eat a light and simple meal and go
early to bed. In not unnatural consequence she found herself, when they
got home after one in the morning, in a state of nervous disquiet caused
by the strain of keeping herself keyed up to the pitch of an animated
party.

Insomnia stared her in the face with its bl