expect too much in the way of hair."

"It isn't that. How old do you think he is?"

"Certainly not thirty."

"What did you tell him about me?"

"About you? I don't remember telling him anything."

"Oh, but you did, mother!"

"What makes you think so?"

"I know you did, when I was sitting near the piano with Max Elliot."

"Perhaps I did then. But I can't remember what it was. It must have been
something very trifling."

"Oh, of course I know that!" said Charmian almost petulantly.

Mrs. Mansfield realized that the girl had not enjoyed her evening, but
she was too wise to ask her why. Indeed she was not much given to the
putting of intimate questions to Charmian. So she changed the subject
quietly, and they were soon at home.

Twelve o'clock was striking as they entered the house. The evening, Mrs.
Mansfield thought, had passed quickly. She was a bad sleeper, and seldom
went to bed before one, but she never kept a maid sitting up for her.

"I'm going to read a book," she said to Charmian, with her hand on the
door of the small library on the first floor, where she usually sat when
she was alone.

Charmian, taller than she was, bent a little and kissed her.

"Wonderful mother!"

"What nonsense you talk; but only to me, I know!"

"Other people know it without my telling them. You jump into minds and
hearts, and poor little I remain outside, squatting like a hungry
child."

"And that is greater nonsense still. Come and sit up with me for a
little."

"No, not to-night, you darling!"

Almost with violence Charmian kissed her again, released her, and went
away up the stairs between white walls to bed.

CHAPTER IV

Charmian had been right when she had said to herself, "This is the
beginning of one of mother's great intimacies."

Claude Heath called almost at once in Berkeley Square; and in a short
time he established a claim to be one of Mrs. Mansfield's close friends.
She had several, but Heath stood out from among them. There was a
special bond between the white-haired woman of forty-five and the young
man of twenty-eight. Perhaps their freemasonry arose from the fact that
each held tenaciously a secret: Mrs. Mansfield her persistent devotion
to the memory of her dead husband, Heath his devotion to his art.
Perhaps the two secrecies in some mysterious way recognized each other,
perhaps the two reserves clung together.

These two in silence certainly understood each one something in the
ot