al eye. In the early forties "young
females" were expected to be retiring, modest, and although they were
as often not, by the grace of that human nature which has changed
little in its progress down the centuries, they maintained a decent
pretence. There were a number of belles in the room, with their
attendant swains, and no doubt each thought herself a great beauty;
but not one of them would have stood up alone in the central promenade
of Bath House. Several of the men stared in disapproval; which
emboldened their fair partners to make disparaging remarks, until
it was observed that Lord Hunsdon, the greatest _parti_ in the
matrimonial market, had gone in search of a chair.

Anne longed to fold the arms she knew not what to do with, but
apprehending open laughter, held them rigidly to her sides, shooting
anxious glances at the opposite mirror. She encountered a battery of
eyes. At the same time she heard a suppressed titter. It was only by
an effort of will that she refrained from running out of the room, and
she felt as if she had been dipped in the hot springs of Nevis. It was
at this agonising moment that the amiable Lord Hunsdon presented the
chair, with the murmured hope that he was not taking a liberty and
that she recalled his having had the good fortune to be presented to
her by his friend Mrs. Nunn earlier in the day. Anne, muttering her
gratitude, accepted the chair without looking at him, although after
he had retired her conscience smote her and she would have made an
effort to be agreeable had he lingered. But immediately she caught the
drift of a dialogue between two women at a neighbouring table, where
the play had stopped, that had beaten faintly upon her ears before she
sank out of sight; and in a moment she was conscious of nothing else.

"My son insists that it is my duty to help him, and I am inclined to
agree with him," a clear decided voice announced. "And after all he is
a gentleman, to say nothing of the fact that time was when he had to
hide himself from the importunities of Bath House. But since that
unhappy affair--I fear our sex had much to answer for--but he has
suffered enough----"

"No doubt!" broke in a caustic voice, "but that is hardly the point.
He has taken to ways of relieving his sufferings which make him quite
unfit for decent society----"

"He can be reformed."

"Fiddlesticks. No one ever reforms. He merely changes his vice. And
_he_! Mr. Mortlake, who is fond of what he