xt?"

This conviction, deeply rooted in Vanna's mind, made her strong to
resist all arguments and reproaches, and the end of the year found her
established as a nurse at one of the largest and most advanced of the
great London hospitals.

CHAPTER TWENTY.

AFTER FIVE YEARS.

Five years later Vanna Strangeways and Piers Rendall were taking tea
with Robert and Jean Gloucester in their London home. Those years of
busy living had left their trace on all four friends; but, as is usually
the case, these changes were most marked on the faces of the women.

A man of forty is almost invariably handsomer than the same man at the
age of twenty-five; but though a woman may gain in expression, the
delicate bloom of youth is a charm which can never be replaced.

Jean Gloucester would always be beautiful, but already in her thirtieth
year she wore a worn and fragile air. The two children who now occupied
the nursery upstairs had made heavy demands on her strength. Jean was
one of the women who, though naturally robust, seem totally unfitted for
the strain of child-bearing. Her figure was slight almost to
emaciation, and her cheeks had lost their bloom, but she was still a
picture fascinating to the eye as she leant back against the cushions of
the sofa--bright rose-coloured cushions, newly covered to show off the
beauty of a wonderful grey gown made in the long flowing folds which she
affected, and which were in striking contrast to the inartistic dresses
of the period.

In whatever direction Jean economised it was never in dress or household
decorations. She was one of the women in whom the beauty instinct takes
precedence above other tastes. If it had been her lot to live in a
garret on ten shillings a week she would have deprived herself of food
until she had saved enough money to paper the walls with a harmonious
colour, and to buy a strip of curtaining to match. To purchase a
prosaic garment for five pounds, when an artistic one could be procured
for ten, was to her practically an impossibility. She stifled any pangs
of conscience by arguing that the outlay was economical in the end.
Good things wore longer, one did not grow wearied of them as of cheaper
designs; and, to do her justice, these theories were invariably
supported by her husband. His wife's beauty was a continual joy to
Robert Gloucester, and he took a boyish delight in the moments when,
walking by her side, he encountered chance City friends, and