and more indisputably gifted than ever. They placed themselves and their
house at the girl's service, partly out of genuine admiration and
good-nature, partly also because they divined in her a profitable social
appendage.

For the Piersons, socially, were still climbing, and had by no means
attained. Their world, so far, consisted too much of the odds and ends
of most other worlds. They were not satisfied with it, and the
friendship of the girl-violinist, whose vivacious beauty and artistic
gift made a stir wherever she went, was a very welcome addition to their
resources. They feted her in their own house; they took her to the
houses of other people; society smiled on Miss Leyburn's protectors more
than it had ever smiled on Mr. and Mrs. Pierson taken alone; and
meanwhile Rose, flushed, excited, and totally unsuspicious, thought the
world a fairy tale, and lived from morning till night in a perpetual din
of music, compliments, and bravos, which seemed to her life indeed--life
at last!

With the beginning of November the Elsmeres returned, and about the same
time Rose began to project tea-parties of her own, to which Mrs. Leyburn
gave a flurried assent. When the invitations were written, Rose sat
staring at them a little, pen in hand.

'I wonder what Catherine will say to some of these people!' she
remarked in a dubious voice to Agnes. 'Some of them are queer, I admit;
but, after all, those two superior persons will have to get used to my
friends some time, and they may as well begin.'

'You cannot expect poor Cathie to come,' said Agnes with sudden energy.

Rose's eyebrows went up. Agnes resented her ironical expression, and
with a word or two of quite unusual sharpness got up and went.

Rose, left alone, sprang up suddenly, and clasped her white fingers
above her head, with a long breath.

'Where my heart used to be there is now just--a black--cold--cinder,'
she remarked with sarcastic emphasis. 'I am sure I used to be a nice
girl once, but it is so long ago I can't remember it!'

She stayed so a minute or more; then two tears suddenly broke and fell.
She dashed them angrily away, and sat down again to her note-writing.

Amongst the cards she had still to fill up was one of which the envelope
was addressed to the Hon. Hugh Flaxman, 90 St. James's Place. Lady
Charlotte, though she had afterwards again left town, had been in Martin
Street at the end of October. The Leyburns had lunched there, and had
been int