g; but she was a little too ready to assert that she could and
would lead her own life as she pleased, without danger to her good
name, because she had never done anything to be ashamed of. The
natural consequence was that she was gradually losing something
which is really much more worth having than commonplace, technical
independence. Her friend Lushington realised the change as soon as she
landed, and it hurt him to see it, because it seemed to him a great
pity that what he had thought an ideal, and therefore a natural
manifestation of art, should be losing the fine outlines that had
made it perfect to his devoted gaze. But this was not all. His rather
over-strung moral sense was offended as well as his artistic taste.
He felt that Margaret was blunting the sensibilities of her feminine
nature and wronging a part of herself, and that the delicate bloom
of girlhood was opening to a blossom that was somewhat too evidently
strong, a shade too vivid and more brilliant than beautiful.

There were times when she reminded him of his mother, and those were
some of the most painful moments of his present life. It is true that
compared with Madame Bonanni in her prime, as he remembered her,
Margaret was as a lily of the valley to a giant dahlia; yet when he
recalled the sweet and healthy English girl he had known and loved in
Versailles three years ago, the vision was delicate and fairy-like
beside the strong reality of the successful primadonna. She was so
very sure of herself now, and so fully persuaded that she was not
accountable to any one for her doings, her tastes, or the choice of
her friends! If not actually like Madame Bonanni, she was undoubtedly
beginning to resemble two or three of her famous rivals in the
profession who were nearer to her own age. Her taste did not run in
the direction of white fox cloaks, named diamonds, and imperial jade
plates; she did not use a solid gold toothbrush with emeralds set in
the handle, like Ismail Pacha; bridge did not amuse her at all, nor
could she derive pleasure from playing at Monte Carlo; she did not
even keep an eighty-horse-power motor-car worth five thousand pounds.
Paul Griggs, who was old-fashioned, called motor-cars 'sudden-death
carts,' and Margaret was inclined to agree with him. She cared for
none of these things.

Nevertheless there was a quiet thoroughgoing luxury in her existence,
an unseen private extravagance, such as Rufus Van Torp, the
millionaire, had nev