ghts to the eye.

And this place was hers. It belonged to her, the girl who a few short
weeks ago had been earning three pounds a week in a City office, and
whose nightmare had been worklessness and starvation.

Helen Everard watched the girl closely. "To the manner born," she
thought. And yet there was that about Joan that she would have altered,
a coldness, an aloofness. Too often the beautiful mouth was set and
hard, never cruel, yet scornful. Too often those lustrous eyes looked
coldly out on to a world that was surely smiling on her now.

"There's something--" the elder woman thought, for she was a clever and
capable woman--a woman who could see under the surface of things, a
woman who had loved and suffered, and had risen triumphant over
misfortunes, which had been so many and so dire that they might have
crushed a less valiant spirit.

General Bartholomew had explained briefly:

"The child is alone in the world. There is something I don't quite
understand, Helen. It is about a marriage--" The old gentleman paused.
"Look here, I'll tell you. I had a letter from Lady Linden, an old
friend, and she begged me to find Joan and bring her and her young
husband together again."

"Then she is married?"

"No, that is, I--I don't know. 'Pon my soul, I don't know--can't make
head or tail of it! She says she isn't, and, by George! she isn't a girl
who would lie; but if she isn't--well, I'm beaten, Helen. I can't make
it out. At any rate, I did bring her and the lad, and a fine lad he is
too, George Alston's son, together. And he left the house without seeing
me, and afterwards the girl told me that he was practically a stranger
to her, and that there had never been any marriage at all. At the same
time she asked me not to write to Lady Linden, and she said that it was
no business of hers, which was true, come to that. And so--so now she's
come into this money, and she is utterly alone in the world, and wants
to go to Starden to live--why, my dear--"

"I see," Helen said. "I shall be glad to go there for a time you know;
it's Alfred's country."

"I remembered that."

"John Everard is living at Buddesby with his sister Constance. They are
two of the dearest people--the children, you know, of Alfred's brother
Matthew."

"Yes--yes, to be sure," said the old gentleman, who was not in the
slightest degree interested.

"And they will be nice for your Joan Meredyth to know," said Mrs.
Everard.

"That's it, that's it