mes in or about Queen Anne Street are not usually much troubled
on that matter. Nor can I say that Miss Vavasor was so troubled. But
with her there was a certain definite thing to be done towards such
eschewal. Lady Macleod by no means avoided her noble relatives,
nor did she at all avoid Alice Vavasor. When in London she was
persevering in her visits to Queen Anne Street, though she considered
herself, nobody knew why, not to be on speaking terms with Mr
Vavasor. And she strove hard to produce an intimacy between Alice
and her noble relatives--such an intimacy as that which she herself
enjoyed;--an intimacy which gave her a footing in their houses but no
footing in their hearts, or even in their habits. But all this Alice
declined with as much consistency as she did those other struggles
which her old cousin made on her behalf,--strong, never-flagging,
but ever-failing efforts to induce the girl to go to such places of
worship as Lady Macleod herself frequented.

A few words must be said as to Alice Vavasor's person; one fact
also must be told, and then, I believe, I may start upon my story.
As regards her character, I will leave it to be read in the story
itself. The reader already knows that she appears upon the scene at
no very early age, and the mode of her life had perhaps given to her
an appearance of more years than those which she really possessed. It
was not that her face was old, but that there was nothing that was
girlish in her manners. Her demeanour was as staid, and her voice
as self-possessed as though she had already been ten years married.
In person she was tall and well made, rather large in her neck and
shoulders, as were all the Vavasors, but by no means fat. Her hair
was brown, but very dark, and she wore it rather lower upon her
forehead than is customary at the present day. Her eyes, too, were
dark, though they were not black, and her complexion, though not
quite that of a brunette, was far away from being fair. Her nose was
somewhat broad, and _retrousse_ too, but to my thinking it was a
charming nose, full of character, and giving to her face at times a
look of pleasant humour, which it would otherwise have lacked. Her
mouth was large, and full of character, and her chin oval, dimpled,
and finely chiselled, like her father's. I beg you, in taking her for
all in all, to admit that she was a fine, handsome, high-spirited
young woman.

And now for my fact. At the time of which I am writing she w