f, and so on. I suppose the last person you
ever see nowadays is the Revd. Sam Gardner? You know they
howked him out of Woodcote? He got "preferment" as he calls
it, and a cure of souls at Margate. Rather rough on the dear
old mater--bless her, _always_--She so liked the Hindhead
country. But if you run up against Praddy you might let him
know and he might get into touch with Vavasour Williams's
people--twig?--F.G.

Vivie rose to her feet half-way through this letter and finished it
standing by the window.

She was tall--say, five feet eight; about twenty-five years of age;
with a well-developed, athletic figure, set off by a smart,
tailor-made gown of grey cloth. Yet although she might be called a
handsome woman she would easily have passed for a good-looking young
man of twenty, had she been wearing male costume.

Her brown-gold hair was disposed of with the least ostentation
possible and with no fluffiness. Her eyebrows were too well
furnished for femininity and nearly met when she frowned--a too
frequent practice, as was the belligerent look from her steely grey
eyes with their beautiful Irish setting of long dark lashes. She had
a straight nose and firm rounded chin, a rather determined look
about the mouth--lower lip too much drawn in as if from perpetual
self-repression. But all this severity disappeared when she smiled
and showed her faultless teeth. The complexion was clear though a
little tanned from deliberate exposure in athletics. Altogether a
woman that might have been described as "jolly good-looking," if it
had not been that whenever any man looked at her something hostile
and forbidding came into the countenance, and the eyebrows formed an
angry bar of hazel-brown above the dark-lashed eyes. But her "young
man" look won for her many a feminine friendship which she
impatiently repelled; for sentimentality disgusted her.

The door of the partners' room opened and in walked Honoria Fraser.
She was probably three years older than Vivie and likewise a
well-favoured woman, a little more matronly in appearance, somewhat
after the style of a married actress who really loves her husband
and has preserved her own looks wonderfully, though no one would
take her for less than twenty-eight.

At the sight of her, Vivie lost her frown and tossed the letter on
to the bureau.

Honoria Fraser had been lunching with friends in Portland Place.

_Honoria_: "What a swotter you are