connections with these grand people. The
countess had heard from a friend that Miss Fox-Seton had once found her
an excellent governess, and she had commissioned her to find for her a
reliable young ladies' serving-maid. She had done some secretarial work
for a charity of which the duchess was patroness. In fact, these people
knew her only as a well-bred woman who for a modest remuneration would
make herself extremely useful in numberless practical ways. She knew
much more of them than they knew of her, and, in her affectionate
admiration for those who treated her with human kindness, sometimes
spoke to Mrs. Cupp or Jane of their beauty or charity with a very nice,
ingenuous feeling. Naturally some of her patrons grew fond of her, and
as she was a fine, handsome young woman with a perfectly correct
bearing, they gave her little pleasures, inviting her to tea or
luncheon, or taking her to the theatre.

Her enjoyment of these things was so frank and grateful that the Cupps
counted them among their own joys. Jane Cupp--who knew something of
dressmaking--felt it a brilliant thing to be called upon to renovate an
old dress or help in the making of a new one for some festivity. The
Cupps thought their tall, well-built lodger something of a beauty, and
when they had helped her to dress for the evening, baring her fine, big
white neck and arms, and adorning her thick braids of hair with some
sparkling, trembling ornaments, after putting her in her four-wheeled
cab, they used to go back to their kitchen and talk about her, and
wonder that some gentleman who wanted a handsome, stylish woman at the
head of his table, did not lay himself and his fortune at her feet.

"In the photograph-shops in Regent Street you see many a lady in a
coronet that hasn't half the good looks she has," Mrs. Cupp remarked
frequently. "She's got a nice complexion and a fine head of hair,
and--if you ask _me_--she's got as nice a pair of clear eyes as a lady
could have. Then look at her figure--her neck and her waist! That kind
of big long throat of hers would set off rows of pearls or diamonds
beautiful! She's a lady born, too, for all her simple, every-day way;
and she's a sweet creature, if ever there was one. For kind-heartedness
and good-nature I never saw her equal."

Miss Fox-Seton had middle-class patrons as well as noble ones,--in fact,
those of the middle class were far more numerous than the duchesses,--so
it had been possible for her to do