vicar on your behalf. He informs me that
if you will call at once on Lady Rockham, 7a Queen's Gate, South
Kensington, S.W., she may be in a position to find you a post in a
family of standing. He tells me she is most capable and kind. He is
writing to her. I shall come to London and see you soon.--Yours
affectionately,

EDWARD.'

Victoria fingered the letter lovingly. Perhaps she was going to have a
chance after all. It was good to have something to do. Indeed it seemed
almost too good to be true; she had vaguely resigned herself to
unemployment. Of course something would ultimately turn up, but the what
and when and how thereof were dangerously dim. She hardly cared to face
these ideas; indeed she dismissed them when they occurred to her with a
mixture of depression and optimism. Now, however, she was buoyant again.
The family of standing would probably pay well and demand little. It
would mean the theatres, the shops, flowers, the latest novels, no end
of nice things. A little work too, of course, driving in the Park with a
dear dowager with the most lovely white hair.

She ate an excellent and comparatively expensive dinner in an Oxford
Street restaurant and went to bed early for the express purpose of
making plans until she fell asleep. She was still buoyant in the
morning. Connaught Square looked its best and even South Kensington's
stony face melted into smiles when it caught sight of her. Lady
Rockham's was a mighty house, the very house for a family of standing.

Victoria walked up the four steep steps of the house where something of
her fate was to be decided. She hesitated for an instant and then, being
healthily inclined to take plunges, pulled the bell with a little more
vigour than was in her heart. It echoed tremendously. The quietude of
Queen's Gate stretching apparently for miles towards the south,
increased the terrifying noise. Victoria's anticipations were half
pleasureable, half fearsome; she felt on the brink of an adventure and
recalled the tremor with which she had entered the New Gaiety for the
first time. Measured steps came nearer and nearer from the inside of the
house; a shape silhouetted itself vaguely on the stained glass of the
door.

She mustered sufficient coolness to tell the butler that she wished to
see Lady Rockham, who was probably expecting her. As the large and solid
man preceded her along an interminable hall, she felt rather than saw
the thick Persi