self, the girl had begged her mother's
pardon, but Lady Kingsmead was not of those to whom the crowning charm
of graceful forgiveness has been vouchsafed, and the battle went on. To
end it, Brigit announced her intention of going to stop with her friend
Pam de Lensky, and without more ado, or a word of good-bye, had left the
house.

Now, though ashamed, or possibly because she was ashamed, her anger
against her mother refused to subside, but grew stronger and bitterer as
the train rushed through the dull afternoon Londonwards.

"Why shouldn't I marry whom I choose? What has she ever done for me that
gives her a right to dictate to me? And I could _kill_ Gerald." A dark
flush crept up her cheeks and her mouth twisted furiously. For Carron
had dared to waylay her in the passage on her way to her room, and his
remarks had not been of a kind calculated to quiet her. Women who have
loved are sorry for men who love them, but women who do not know what
the word means are either amused or irritated by it. The conversation,
carried on in a careful undertone, and lasting only about five minutes,
was one that the girl would never, she knew, be able to forget, and one
that neither she nor the man could ever make even a pretence of
forgiving.

Far too excited and annoyed to read, she watched with unseeing eyes the
swift flight of the familiar landscape, and then suddenly, as the train
stopped, came to herself with a start. Victoria!

Mechanically, her thick chiffon veil over her face, she looked after
her luggage, took a hansom, and drove down Victoria Street, past the
Abbey, over Westminster Bridge, and so to Waterloo Station.

London was dull, but its dulness, grey and soft, was being mitigated by
a gradual and beautiful blossoming of lights--lights reddish, golden,
and clear white. People hurried along the streets, hansoms jingled and
passed by, buses and vans blocked the view and then, with elephantine
deliberateness, ambled on. Motors of all kinds grunted and jingled, from
the opulent, throaty-voiced ones, that chuckle as if they were fed on
turtle-soup, to the cheap variety, that sound as they pass like an
old-fashioned tinsmith's waggon.

And the combined effect of all these varied sounds was so different from
the sound of Paris, or New York, or Berlin, that an intelligent blind
man would have known where he was, if softly and undisturbingly dropped
from a balloon to a safe street corner.

Brigit Mead had no particula