a few months after her husband's death her parents had both died,
and she found herself alone in the world, and almost penniless. She was
not strong enough for war work, the doctor said, and so she had let the
doors of Lancaster Gate close upon her, only looking for something quiet
and settled--even if it were a settled slavery.

After which, suddenly, just about the time of the Armistice, she had
become aware that nothing was the same; that the women and the girls--so
many of them in uniform!--that she met in the streets when she took her
daily walk--were new creatures; not attractive to her as a whole, but
surprising and formidable, because of the sheer life there was in them.
And she herself began to get restive; to realize that she was not
herself so very old, and to want to know--a hundred things! It had taken
her five months, however, to make up her mind; and then at last she had
gone to an agency--the only way she knew--and had braved the cold and
purely selfish wrath of the household she was leaving. And now here she
was in Lord Buntingford's house--Miss Helena Pitstone's chaperon. As she
stood before her looking-glass, fastening her little black dress with
shaking fingers, the first impression of Helena's personality was upon
her, running through her, like wine to the unaccustomed. She supposed
that now girls were all like this--all such free, wild, uncurbed
creatures, a law to themselves. One moment she repeated that she was a
fool to have come; and the next, she would not have found herself back
in Lancaster Gate for the world.

* * * * *

Meanwhile, in the adjoining room, Helena was putting on a tea-gown, a
white and silver "confection," with a little tail like a fish, and a
short skirt tapering down to a pair of slim legs and shapely feet. After
all her protestations, she had allowed the housemaid to help her unpack,
and when the dress was on she had sent Mary flying down to the
drawing-room to bring up some carnations she had noticed there. When
these had been tucked into her belt, and the waves of her brown hair had
been somehow pinned and coiled into a kind of order, and she had
discovered and put on her mother's pearls, she was pleased with herself,
or rather with as much of herself as she could see in the inadequate
looking-glass on the toilet-table. A pier-glass from somewhere was of
course the prime necessity, and must be got immediately. Meanwhile she
had to be cont