e before her.

She was obliged to force herself to recollect that this girl was a model
hired to pose for men--paid to expose her young, unclothed limbs and
body! Yet--could it be possible! Was this the girl hailed as a comrade
by the irrepressible Ogilvy and Annan--the heroine of a score of
unconventional and careless gaieties recounted by them? Was this the
coquette who, it was rumoured, had flung over Querida, snapped her white
fingers at Penrhyn Cardemon, and laughed disrespectfully at a dozen
respected pillars of society, who appeared to be willing to support her
in addition to the entire social structure?

Very quietly the girl raised her head. Her sensitive lips were edged
with a smile, but there was no mirth in her clear eyes:

"Mrs. Collis, perhaps you are waiting for me to say something about your
letter and my answer to it. I did not mean to embarrass you by not
speaking of it, but I was not certain that the initiative lay with me."

Lily reddened: "It lies with _me_, Miss West--the initiative. I mean--"
She hesitated, suddenly realising how difficult it had become to go
on,--how utterly unprepared she was to encounter passive resistance from
such composure as this young girl already displayed.

"You wrote to me about your anxiety concerning Mr. Neville," said
Valerie, gently.

"Yes--I did, Miss West. You will surely understand--and forgive me--if I
say to you that I am still a prey to deepest anxiety."

"Why?"

The question was so candid, so direct that for a moment Lily remained
silent. But the dark, clear, friendly eyes were asking for an answer,
and the woman of the world who knew how to meet most situations and how
to dominate them, searched her experience in vain for the proper words
to use in this one.

After a moment Valerie's eyes dropped, and she resumed her sewing; and
Lily bit her lip and composed her mind to its delicate task:

"Miss West," she said, "what I have to say is not going to be very
agreeable to either of us. It is going to be painful perhaps--and it is
going to take a long while to explain--"

"It need not take long," said Valerie, without raising her eyes from her
stitches; "it requires only a word to tell me that you and your father
and mother do not wish your brother to marry me."

She looked up quietly, and her eyes met Lily's:

"I promise not to marry him," she said. "You are perfectly right. He
belongs to his own family; he belongs in his own world."

She looked