her own flesh and blood, if it was possible to think good.

She, too, might have filled her letters to Australia with titles of
nobility--nobility of a firmer standing than the Countess and her
friends could boast of--had she been inclined to do so. A baronial
hall, dating from the Conquest--a ducal castle, not to speak of a Royal
Presence Chamber--was nothing to Deborah Pennycuick after a while.

To see her on a crowded London staircase, laughing with a prince or a
prime minister, was a common object of the season for a number of
years; while varnishing days and first nights would have lacked charm
for the society reporter who could not place her fine figure and her
French gowns in his pictures of these scenes. Goodwood and Cowes were
familiar with her striking face and her expert interest in horses and
yachts; Highland shooting-lodges, English hunting-fields, claimed her
for their own. Southern Europe, the Nile, Bayreuth--in short, wherever
social life was bright, comfortable and select, there she turned up
promiscuous, as the spirit moved her, to be welcomed open-armed as a
matter of course. Men, young and old, continued to pay her homage,
which was not just the sort of homage they paid to Frances; proposals
of marriage were, or might have been if not nipped in the bud, almost
as plentiful as invitations to country houses in the autumn. And she
relished it all with singular enjoyment--until she began to feel the
approach of that winter and evening of life which has so sharp a chill
for those who have loved the sun.

Claud Dalzell was likewise a denizen of the great world that was hers
and not Francie's, and, close corporation as it is, they were never far
off each other's beat, seldom in ignorance of each other's whereabouts.
At the same time, they also did not touch. It was known throughout the
great world, which is so small, that there was a deadly feud between
them; and tactful hostesses took pains not to bring them into
juxtaposition. In public places, when meetings occurred by accident,
only the most frigid bows were interchanged.

For, in quite early times, when the Australian heiress, as she was
improperly styled, was taking London more or less by storm, she chanced
to overhear a brief colloquy not intended for her ears.

"Who is that glorious woman that came in with the duchess? I don't see
her just now, but she had a red frock on, with black lace over it--dark
hair and diamond stars--not half as bright