its master's hand, but no favour was vouchsafed.

"I don't want Dreda to be grateful. I need no thanks. I love her so
much that it is my greatest pleasure to be able to help her," said
little Susan proudly; but when Norah persistently demanded to know why
she had no answer to give. In truth, she herself was sometimes puzzled
to account for her own devotion to the hasty, undisciplined creature who
fell so far short of her ideal feminine character. Susan's quiet brown
eyes were not blinded; probably no girl in the school was more conscious
of Dreda's faults, yet her love lived on unchecked by the discovery.
She did not realise that it was Dreda's personal beauty and charm which
had captivated her imagination, and that all the starved instincts of
her beauty-loving nature were finding vicarious satisfaction in
another's life. Susan had lived her life in a prosaic household, where
beauty was the last consideration to be taken into account. If an
article had to be bought, Mrs Webster gave consideration to strength
and durability, and to strength and durability alone. In buying
curtains, for instance, she sought for a nondescript colour which would
defy the sun's rays, a material that would stand repeated washings, and
a pattern which would conceal possible stains. A discovery that the
cloth would ultimately cut up into desirable dusters was sufficient to
give the casting vote of decision, and thereafter draperies of dingy
cinnamon would be hung against walls of yellow ochre, with complacent
and lasting satisfaction. Amid such drab surroundings Susan had spent
her life, and when she looked in the glass it was to see a replica of
her sister's faulty features and pallid skin, yet hidden away within
that insignificant exterior there burnt the true artist's passion for
beauty, for colour, for grace, of which three qualities Etheldreda Saxon
was so charming an embodiment. When Susan mentally worked out her
novels of the future her heroines invariably wore Dreda's guise, the
romantic figures of history took upon themselves Dreda's form, and
smiled upon her with Dreda's confident eyes.

The ordinary sentimental school friendship was glorified into a selfless
devotion in which her highest joy was found in denying herself for
Dreda's good. The two girls--one tall, golden-haired, with vivid
colouring and an air of confident strength; the other small, plain,
neutral-tinted, timid of mien--were inseparable in work and at play