rvants.'
For several years Miss Levering's friends had been speaking of her as
one fallen a victim to that passion for Italy that makes it an abiding
place dearer than home to so many English-born. But the half-sister,
Mrs. Fox-Moore, had not been misled either by that theory or by the
difficulty as to pleasing Wark with the Queen Anne's Gate servants.
'It's not that Vida loves Italy so much as that, for some reason, she
doesn't love England at all.' Nevertheless, Mrs. Fox-Moore after some
months had persuaded her to 'bring Wark and try us.'

The experiment, now over a year old, seemed to have turned out well. If
Vida really did not love her native land, she seemed to enjoy well
enough what she called smiling 'the St. Martin's Summer' of her success
in London society.

* * * * *

She turned over in her bed on this particular May morning, stretching
out her long figure, and then letting it sink luxuriously back into
relaxed quiescence with a conscious joy in prolonging those last ten
minutes when sleep is slowly, softly, one after another, withdrawing her
thousand veils.

Vaguely, as she lay there with face half buried in her pillow, vaguely
she was aware that Wark was making even more noise than common.

When the woman had bustled in and bustled out several times, and
deposited the shoes with a 'dump,' she reappeared with the delicate
porcelain tray that bore the early tea. On the little table close to
where the dark head lay half hidden, Wark set the fragile burden
down--did it with an emphasis that made cup and saucer shiver and run
for support towards the round-bellied pot.

Vida opened her heavy-lidded eyes. 'Really, Wark, you know, nobody on
earth would let you wake them in the morning except me.' She sat up and
pulled the pillow higher. 'Give me the tray here,' she said sleepily.

Wark obeyed. She had said nothing to Vida's reproof. She stood now by
the bedside without a trace of either contrition or resentment in the
wooden face that seemed, in recompense for never having been young, to
be able successfully to defy the 'antique pencil.' Time had made but one
or two faint ineffectual scratches there, as one who tries, and then
abandons, an unpromising surface. The lack of record in the face lent it
something almost cryptic. If there were no laughter-wrought lines about
the eyes, neither was there mark of grief or self-repression near the
mouth. She would, you felt, defy Time