"Oh, no, it's war time," said Patricia, "we shall just dine quietly at
the Quadrant Grill-room."

A meaning glance passed between Mrs. Mosscrop-Smythe and Miss Wangle.
Why she had fixed upon the Quadrant Grill-room Patricia could not have
said.

"And now," said Patricia, "I must run upstairs and see that my best bib
and tucker are in proper condition to be worn before my fiance. I'll
tell him what you say about the ring. Good night, everybody, if we
don't meet again."

"Patricia Brent," admonished Patricia to her reflection in the
looking-glass, as she brushed her hair that night, "you're a most
unmitigated little liar. You've told those people the wickedest of
wicked lies. You've engaged yourself to an unknown major in the
British Army. You're going to dine with him to-morrow night, and
heaven knows what will be the result of it all. A single lie leads to
so many. Oh, Patricia, Patricia!" she nodded her head admonishingly at
the reflection in the glass. "You're really a very wicked young
woman." Then she burst out laughing. "At least, I have given them
something to talk about, any old how. By now they've probably come to
the conclusion that I'm a most awful rip."

Patricia never confessed it to herself, but she was extremely lonely.
Instinctively shy of strangers, she endeavoured to cover up her
self-consciousness by assuming an attitude of nonchalance, and the
result was that people saw only the artificiality. She had been
brought up in the school of "men are beasts," and she took no trouble
to disguise her indifference to them. With women she was more popular.
If anyone were ill at Galvin House, it was always Patricia Brent who
ministered to them, sat and read to them, and cheered them through
convalescence back to health.

Her acquaintance with men had been almost entirely limited to those she
had found in the various boarding-houses, glorified in the name of
residential hotels, at which she had stayed. Five years previously, on
the death of her father, a lawyer in a small country town, she had come
to London and obtained a post as secretary to a blossoming politician.
There she had made herself invaluable, and there she had stayed,
performing the same tasks day after day, seldom going out, since the
war never at all, and living a life calculated to make an acid spinster
of a Venus or a Juno.

"Oh, bother to-morrow!" said Patricia as she got into bed that night;
"it's a long way off and perh