ery beady,' said Sara, absent-mindedly, as she tried the
effect of the glitter against her night-gown.

'Grandmothers are worse,' amended Cecil. 'They're beady and bu-gly,
too.'

'What's bewgly?'

'Well, it's what my grandmother called them when I pulled some of them
off. Not proper bugles, you know, what you "too! too! too!" make music
with when you're fighting the enemy. My grandmother thinks bugles are
little shiny black things only about that long'--he measured less than
an inch on his minute forefinger--'with long holes through so they can
sew them on their clothes.'

'On their caps, too,' said Sara; 'only they're usurally white when
they're on caps.'

'Here's your mother coming! Now, what will she say to you, Cecil?'

They turned their eyes to the door, strangely unwelcoming for Laura
Tunbridge's children, and their young faces betrayed no surprise when
the very different figure of Nurse Dampney emerged from behind the tall
chintz screen that protected the cots from any draught through the
opening door. Cecil, with an action of settled despair, turned from the
spectacle, and buried his face for one last moment of comfort in Vida
Levering's shoulder; while Sara, with a baleful glance, muttered--

'I knew it was that old interfiddler.'

'Now, Master Cecil----'

'Yes, nurse.' Miss Levering carried him back to his cot.

'Mrs. Tunbridge has sent up, miss, to know if you've come. They're
waiting dinner.'

'Not really! Is it a quarter past already?'

'More like twenty minutes, miss.'

The lady caught up her necklace, cut short her good-byes, and fled
downstairs, clasping the shining thing round her neck as she went--a
swaying figure in soft flying draperies and gleaming, upraised arms.

She entered the drawing-room with a quiet deliberation greater even than
common. It was the effect that haste and contrition frequently wrought
in her--one of the things that made folk call her 'too self-contained,'
even 'a trifle supercilious.'

But when other young women, recognizing some not easily definable charm
in this new-comer into London life, tried to copy the effect alluded to,
it was found to be less imitable than it looked.

CHAPTER II

There were already a dozen or so persons in the gold-and-white
drawing-room, yet the moment Vida Levering entered, she knew from the
questing glance Mrs. Freddy sent past her children's visitor, that even
now the party was not complete.

Other eyes turned that w