ss, and during the Italian journey. Her total lack of
reserve, or what appeared so, had been first an amazement to him, and
then a positive pleasure and entertainment. To make a friend of
him--difficult and scrupulous as he was, and now more than ever--a woman
must be at the cost of most of the advances. But, after the first
evening with him, Betty had made them in profusion, without the smallest
demur, though perfectly well aware of her mother's ambitions. There was
a tie of cousinship between them, and a considerable difference of age.
Betty had decided at once that a mother was a dear old goose, and that
great friends she and Aldous Raeburn should be--and, in a sense, great
friends they were.

Aldous was still propitiating her, when Lady Winterbourne came into the
tea-room, followed by Marcella. The elder lady threw a hurried and not
very happy glance at the pair in the corner. Marcella appeared to be in
animated talk with a young journalist whom Raeburn knew, and did not
look their way.

"Just _one_ thing!" said Betty, bending forward and speaking eagerly in
Aldous's ear. "It was all a mistake--wasn't it? Now I know her I feel
sure it was. You don't--you don't--really think badly of her?"

Aldous heard her unwillingly. He was looking away from her towards the
buffet, when she saw a change in the eyes--a tightening of the lip--a
something keen and hostile in the whole face.

"Perhaps Miss Boyce will be less of a riddle to all of us before long!"
he said hastily, as though the words escaped him. "Shall we get out of
this very uncomfortable corner?"

Betty looked where he had looked, and saw a young man greeting Marcella
with a manner so emphatic and intimate, that the journalist had
instantly moved out of his way. The young man had a noticeable pile of
fair curls above a very white and rounded forehead.

"Who is that talking to Miss Boyce?" she asked of Aldous; "I have seen
him, but I can't remember the name."

"That is Mr. Wharton, the member for one of our divisions," said
Aldous, as he rose from his chair.

Betty gave a little start, and her brow puckered into a frown. As she
too rose, she said resentfully to Aldous:

"Well, you _have_ snubbed me!"

As usual, he could not find the effective or clever thing to say.

"I did not mean to," he replied simply; but Betty, glancing at him, saw
something in his face which gripped her heart. A lump rose in her
throat.

"Do let's go and find Ermyntrude!" she sa