ed
away from her.

"Max Elliot seems quite afraid of me," she said at last. "Am I so very
vulgar?"

"Not more so than most intelligent young women who are rather 'in it' in
London," returned her mother.

"Surely I'm not a climber, without knowing it!"

"No, I don't think so. But your peculiar terror of mixing with the crowd
naturally makes you struggle a little, and puff and blow in the effort
to keep your head above water."

"How very awful! I don't know why it is, but your head always is well
above water without your making any effort."

"I don't bother as to whether it is or not, you see."

"No. But what has it all to do with this Mr. Heath?"

"Perhaps we shall find out to-morrow night. Max may think you'll be
inclined to rave about him."

"Rave about a cropped head that composes away from the piano!"

"Ah, that Brighton tradition!" said Mrs. Mansfield, taking up Steiner's
_Teosofia_.

CHAPTER II

In the comedy of London Mrs. Mansfield and her daughter did not play
leading parts, but they were, in the phrase of the day, "very much in
it." Mrs. Mansfield's father had been a highly intelligent, cultivated,
charming and well-off man, who had had a place in the Isle of Wight, and
been an intimate friend of Tennyson, and of most of the big men of his
day. Her mother had possessed the peculiar and rather fragile kind of
beauty which seems to attract great English painters, and had been much
admired and beloved in Melbury Road, Holland Park, and elsewhere. She,
too, had been intelligent, intellectual and very musical. From Frederick
Leighton's little parties, where Joachim or Norman Neruda played to a
chosen few, the beautiful Mrs. Mortimer and her delightful husband were
seldom missing. They were prominent members of that sort of family party
which made the "Monday Pops" for years a social as well as an artistic
function. And their small, but exquisite house in Berkeley Square, now
inherited by their daughter, was famous for its "winter evenings," at
which might be met the _creme de la creme_ of the intellectual and
artistic worlds, and at which no vulgarian, however rich and prominent,
was ever to be seen.

Mrs. Mansfield, quite instinctively and naturally, had carried on the
family tradition; at first with her husband, Arthur Mansfield, one of
the most cultivated and graceful members of their "set," and after his
death alone. She was well off, had a love of beauty and comfort, but a
horror of di