eve."

That modern faculty of pressing on an aching nerve was assuredly not
lacking to Bianca. To enter the girl's room was jabbing at the nerve
indeed.

She looked round her. The mental vacuity of that little room! There was
not one single thing--with the exception of a torn copy of
Tit-Bits--which suggested that a mind of any sort lived there. For all
that, perhaps because of that, it was neat enough.

"Yes," said the landlady, "she keeps her room tidy. Of course, she's a
country girl--comes from down my way." She said this with a dry twist of
her grim, but not unkindly, features. "If it weren't for that," she went
on, "I don't think I should care to let to one of her profession."

Her hungry eyes, gazing at Bianca, had in them the aspirations of all
Nonconformity.

Bianca pencilled on her card:

"If you can come to my father to-day or tomorrow, please do."

"Will you give her this, please? It will be quite enough."

"I'll give it her," the landlady said; "she'll be glad of it, I daresay.
I see her sitting here. Girls like that, if they've got nothing to
do--see, she's been moping on her bed...."

The impress of a form was, indeed, clearly visible on the red and yellow
tasselled tapestry of the bed.

Bianca cast a look at it.

"Thank you," she said; "good day."

With the jabbed nerve aching badly she came slowly homewards.

Before the garden gate the little model herself was gazing at the house,
as if she had been there some time. Approaching from across the road,
Bianca had an admirable view of that young figure, now very trim and
neat, yet with something in its lines--more supple, perhaps, but less
refined--which proclaimed her not a lady; a something fundamentally
undisciplined or disciplined by the material facts of life alone, rather
than by a secret creed of voluntary rules. It showed here and there in
ways women alone could understand; above all, in the way her eyes looked
out on that house which she was clearly longing to enter. Not 'Shall I
go in?' was in that look, but 'Dare I go in?'

Suddenly she saw Bianca. The meeting of these two was very like the
ordinary meeting of a mistress and her maid. Bianca's face had no
expression, except the faint, distant curiosity which seems to say: 'You
are a sealed book to me; I have always found you so. What you really
think and do I shall never know.'

The little model's face wore a half-caught-out, half-stolid look.

"Please go in," B