e in a formless hand, but she did not know
how to spell, and she had thought it best to have a secretary who
could write well and spell correctly. Though, as far as literacy was
concerned, she was such an almost incomparably ignorant woman, she had
all the knowledge the best society wants, or, if she found herself out
of any, she went and bought some; she was able to buy almost anything.

Verrian thanked the secretary for remembering him, in the belief that he
was directly thanking Mrs. Westangle, whose widespread consciousness his
happiness in accepting did not immediately reach; and in the very large
house party, which he duly joined under her roof, he was aware of losing
distinctiveness almost to the point of losing identity. This did not
quite happen on the way to Belford, for, when he went to take his seat
in the drawing-room car, a girl in the chair fronting him put out her
hand with the laugh of Miss Macroyd.

"She did remember you!" she cried out. "How delightful! I don't see how
she ever got onto you"--she made the slang her own--"in the first place,
and she must have worked hard to be sure of you since."

Verrian hung up his coat and put his suit-case behind his chair, the
porter having put it where he could not wheel himself vis-a-vis with
the girl. "She took all the time there was," he answered. "I got my
invitation only the day before yesterday, and if I had been in more
demand, or had a worse conscience--"

"Oh, do say worse conscience! It's so much more interesting," the girl
broke in.

"--I shouldn't have the pleasure of going to Seasands with you now,"
he concluded, and she gave her laugh. "Do I understand that simply my
growing fame wouldn't have prevailed with her?"

Anything seemed to make Miss Macroyd laugh. "She couldn't have cared
about that, and she wouldn't have known. You may be sure that it was a
social question with her after the personal question was settled. She
must have liked your looks!" Again Miss Macroyd laughed.

"On that side I'm invulnerable. It's only a literary vanity to be
soothed or to be wounded that I have," Verrian said.

"Oh, there wouldn't be anything personal in her liking your looks. It
would be merely deciding that personally you would do," Miss Macroyd
laughed, as always, and Verrian put on a mock seriousness in asking:

"Then I needn't be serious if there should happen to be anything so
Westangular as a Mr. Westangle?"

"Not the least in the world."

"But