s listened to her suggestions, which, however,
sometimes startled him. One of them was that he should import into the
Five Towns a modiste from Paris, offering a salary of two hundred a
year. The old provincial stood aghast. He had the idea that all Parisian
women were stage-dancers. And to pay four pounds a week to a female!

Nevertheless, Mademoiselle Bertot--styled in the shop 'Madame'--now
presides over Ezra Brunt's dressmakers, draws her four pounds a week (of
which she saves two), and by mere nationality has given a unique
distinction and success to her branch of the business.

Eva occupied a small room opening off the principal showroom, and during
hours of work she issued thence but seldom. Only customers of the
highest importance might speak with her. She was a power felt rather
than seen. Employes who knocked at her door always did so with a certain
awe of what awaited them on the other side, and a consciousness that the
moment was unsuitable for levity. 'If you please, Miss Eva----'. Here
she gave audience to the 'buyers' and window-dressers, listened to
complaints and excuses, and occasionally had a secret orgy of afternoon
tea with one or two of her friends. None but these few girls--mostly
younger than herself, and remarkable only in that their dislike of the
snobbery of the Five Towns, though less fiercely displayed, agreed with
her own--really knew Eva. To them alone did she unveil herself, and by
them she was idolized.

'She is simply splendid when you know her--such a jolly girl!' they
would say to other people; but other people, especially other women,
could not believe it. They fearfully respected her because she was very
well dressed and had quantities of money. But they called her 'a curious
creature'; it was inconceivable to them that she should choose to work
in a shop; and her tongue had a causticity which was sometimes
exceedingly disconcerting and mortifying. As for men, she was shy of
them, and, moreover, she loathed the elaborate and insincere ritual of
deference which the average man practises towards women unrelated to
him, particularly when they are young and rich. Her father she adored,
without knowing it; for he often angered her, and humiliated her in
private. As for the rest, she was, after all, only six-and-twenty.

'If you don't mind, I should like to walk along with you,' Clive Timmis
said to her one Sunday evening in the porch of the Bethesda Chapel.

'I shall be glad,' she an