book.

"I don't think so," she said. "Lord Deerehurst offered to take me down,
but I shan't go. I--I have some business to attend to."

Lady Frances laughed; picked up her riding whip, which she had laid
aside, and, coming forward, kissed Clodagh.

"Then I expect I shall see you. Deerehurst is much more insistent than
any business." Once again her shrewd glance travelled over Clodagh's
face. "Good-bye! In any case, you'll be at the Ord's for bridge
to-night? We can arrange then about going down to Tuffnell."

"Yes"--Clodagh returned the pressure of her hand--"yes; I suppose I
shall go to the Ord's. Yes; I shall--good-bye!"

She walked with her visitor to the door of the bedroom, and stood
waiting on the threshold until the hall door had closed. Then, almost
mechanically, she turned, walked back to the table, and with a sharp,
nervous movement gathered up the heap of papers still lying beside her
plate.

As she stood there, in the flood of June sunshine, beside the
attractive disarray of the pretty breakfast-table, she was aware of a
horrible sense of helplessness, of alarm and impotence. For the papers
she held between her hands were bills--a sheaf of bills--all unpaid and
all pressing.

As she stood there, a swift review of the past months sped before her
mind, carrying something like dismay in its train.

In April she had entered upon the tenancy of her furnished flat, having
already borrowed eight hundred pounds from her friend and counsellor,
Lady Frances Hope; and under the auspices of this same counsellor, had
began her career as a woman of fashion.

In social circles the period and the conditions of mourning become more
slender every season. And nowadays, although a widow may not attend
dances or large dinner-parties, there are a hundred smaller, more
exclusive--and possibly more expensive--forms of entertainment at which
she may appear in her own intimate set. Very quiet dinners--very small
luncheon parties--even friendly bridge parties--are quite permissible,
when it is a tacitly accepted fact that the mourner is, by a natural
law, barely entering upon her life--that the one mourned has departed
from it by an equally natural dispensation.

Under these conditions Clodagh had begun her London career; and for
more than a month she had lived--in the most costly sense of the word.
Her mourning had been the most distinguished that a famous dressmaker
could devise; her electric brougham had possessed all t