professional career,
by preference the law; he idled away his schooldays, failed at
examinations, and ultimately had to be sent into 'business.' Mr Lord
obtained a place for him in a large shipping agency; but it still seemed
doubtful whether he would make any progress there, notwithstanding the
advantage of his start; at two-and-twenty he was remunerated with a mere
thirty shillings a week, a nominal salary,' his employers called it.
Nancy often felt angry with her brother for his lack of energy and
ambition; he might so easily, she thought, have helped to establish,
by his professional dignity, her own social status at the level she
desired.

There came into view a familiar figure, crossing from the other side of
the way. Nancy started, waved her hand, and went to open the door. Her
look had wholly altered; she was bright, mirthful, overflowing with
affectionate welcome.

This friend of hers, Jessica Morgan by name, had few personal
attractions. She looked overwrought and low-spirited; a very plain
and slightly-made summer gown exhibited her meagre frame with undue
frankness; her face might have been pretty if health had filled and
coloured the flesh, but as it was she looked a ghost of girlhood, a
dolorous image of frustrate sex. In her cotton-gloved hand she carried
several volumes and notebooks.

'I'm so glad you're in,' was her first utterance, between pants after
hasty walking and the jerks of a nervous little laugh. 'I want to
ask you something about Geometrical Progression. You remember that
formula--'

'How can I remember what I never knew?' exclaimed Nancy. 'I always hated
those formulas; I couldn't learn them to save my life.'

'Oh, that's nonsense! You were much better at mathematics than I was. Do
just look at what I mean.'

She threw her books down upon a chair, and opened some pages of scrawled
manuscript, talking hurriedly in a thin falsetto.

Her family, a large one, had fallen of late years from a position of
moderate comfort into sheer struggle for subsistence. Jessica, armed
with certificates of examinational prowess, got work as a visiting
governess. At the same time, she nourished ambitions, discernible
perhaps in the singular light of her deep-set eyes and a something
of hysteric determination about her lips. Her aim, at present, was to
become a graduate of London University; she was toiling in her leisure
hours--the hours of exhaustion, that is to say--to prepare herself for
matriculat