going to tell me about that pretty girl I saw at Enton--Lady
Caroom's daughter, wasn't she?"

His face lit up--she saw his thoughts go flitting away, and the corner
of his lips curl in a retrospective smile of pleasure.

"Sybil Caroom," he said, softly. "She is a very charming girl. You
would like her, I am sure. Of course she's been brought up in rather a
frivolous world, but she's quite unspoilt, very sympathetic, and very
intelligent. Isn't that a good character?"

"Very," she answered, with a suspicion of dryness in her tone. "Is this
paragon engaged to be married yet?"

He looked at her, keenly surprised by the infusion of something foreign
in her tone.

"I--I think not," he answered. "I should like you to meet her very
much. She will be coming to London soon, and I know that she will be
interested in our new scheme if it comes to anything. We will take her
down and give her a few practical lessons in philanthropy."

"Will she be interested?" Mary asked.

"Immensely," he answered, with confidence. "Lady Caroom is an awfully
good sort, too."

Mary remembered the well-bred insolence of Lady Caroom's stare, the
contemplative incredulity which found militant expression in her
beautiful eyes and shapely curving lips, and for a moment half closed
her eyes.

"Ah, well," she said, "that afternoon was rather a terrible one to me.
Let us talk of something else."

He was profuse at once in apologies for his own thoughtlessness. But
she checked him almost at the outset.

"It is I who am to blame for an unusual weakness," she said. "Let us
both forget it. And don't you find this place hot? Let us get outside
and walk."

They found a soft misty rain falling. The commissionaire called a
hansom. She moved her skirts to make room for him.

"I am going down to Stepney to see a man who I think will be interested
in my scheme," he said. "When may I come down again and have tea with
you?"

"Any afternoon, if you will drop me a line the night before," she said,
"but I am not very likely to be out, in any case. Thank you so much for
my dinner. My aunt seemed to think that I was coming to London to
starve. I think I feel fairly safe this evening, at any rate."

The cab drove off, skirting the gaily-lit crescent of Regent Street.
The smile almost at once died away from her lips. She leaned forward
and looked at herself in one of the oblong mirrors. Her face was almost
colourless, the skin seemed drawn closely round her