the leader of this
conversation, a merry little face with eyes like wild flowers and a
great deal of shining hair, told of Beatrice's desperate condition
when the news of Miss ----'s betrayal reached her.

"I went up and found her in tears, her hair hanging down her back,
saying that nobody cared for her. Although she spends three thousand
a year on clothes, she sits up in that bedroom in a dressing-gown
that we have known for the last five years. "Well, Beatrice," I
said, "if you'll only put on a pair of stays and dress yourself and
come downstairs, perhaps somebody will care for you."

A writer upon economic subjects who trailed a black lock of hair over
a bald skull declared he could see the scene in Beatrice's bedroom
quite clearly, and he spoke of her woolly poodle looking on, trying
to understand what it was all about, and his allusion to the poodle
made everybody laugh, for some reason not very apparent, and Evelyn
wondered at the difference between the people she was now among and
those she had left--the nuns in their convent at the edge of
Wimbledon Common, and her thoughts passing back, she remembered the
afternoon in the Savoy Hotel spent among her fellow-artists.

Her reverie endured, she did not know how long; only that she was
awakened from it by Lady Ascott, come to tell her it was time to go
upstairs to dress for dinner. Now with whom would she go down? With
Owen, of course, such was the etiquette in houses like Thornton
Grange. It was possible Lady Ascott might look upon them as married
people and send her down with somebody else--one of those young men!
No! The young men would be reserved for the girls. As she suspected,
she went down with Owen. He did not tell her where he had been since
she last saw him; intimate conversation was impossible amid a
glitter of silver dishes and anecdotes of people they knew; but
after dinner in a quiet corner she would hear his story. And as soon
as the men came up from the dining-room Owen went straight towards
her, and she followed him out of hearing of the card-players.

"At last we are alone. My gracious! how I've looked forward to this
little talk with you, all through that long dinner, and the formal
talk with the men afterwards, listening to infernal politics and
still more infernal hunting. You didn't expect to meet me, did you?"

"No; Lady Ascott said nothing about your being here when she came to
the concert."

"And perhaps you wouldn't have come if y