t even if it had been, if only the papers had not been too
busy in the matter, she might have had success. Some people do whose
names have figured upon the evening bills exposed at the street corners.
Hers had not and was not likely to. It was her art to look deliberately
pure and good, and to suggest, in a way almost indefinable and very
perpetual, that she could be anything and everything, and perhaps
had been, under the perfumed shadow of the rose. The fact that the
suggestion seemed to be conveyed with intention was the thing that took
corrupt old London's fancy and made Miss Schley a pet.

Her name of Pimpernel was not against her.

Men liked it for its innocence, and laughed as they mentioned it in the
clubs, as who should say:

"We know the sort of Pimpernel we mean."

Miss Schley's social success brought her into Lady Holme's set, and
people noticed, what Lady Holme had been the first to notice, the faint
likeness between them. Lady Holme was not exquisitely sly. Her voice was
not like a choir-boy's; her manner was not like the manner of an image;
her eyes were not for ever cast down. Even her characteristic silence
was far less perpetual than the equally characteristic silence of Miss
Schley. But men said they were the same colour. What men said women
began to think, and it was not an assertion wholly without foundation.
At a little distance there was an odd resemblance in the one white face
and fair hair to the other. Miss Schley's way of moving, too, had a sort
of reference to Lady Holme's individual walk. There were several things
characteristic of Lady Holme which Miss Schley seemed to reproduce, as
it were, with a sly exaggeration. Her hair was similar, but paler, her
whiteness more dead, her silence more perpetual, her composure more
enigmatically serene, her gait slower, with diminished steps.

It was all a little like an imitation, with just a touch of caricature
added.

One or two friends remarked upon it to Lady Holme, who heard them very
airily.

"Are we alike?" she said. "I daresay, but you mustn't expect me to see
it. One never knows the sort of impression one produces on the world.
I think Miss Schley a very attractive little creature, and as to her
social gifts, I bow to them."

"But she has none," cried Mrs. Wolfstein, who was one of those who had
drawn Lady Holme's attention to the likeness.

"How can you say so? Everyone is at her feet."

"Her feet, perhaps. They are lovely. But sh