nths afterwards. Then on reflection it left some tarnish on her
family, even if the memory of the dear dead boy, the too brilliant
boy, softened from the poignancy of utter disappointment into a
tender sorrow and an infinite pity and forgiveness.

But the tragedy turned her thoughts from marriage to some mission of
well-doing. She determined to devote that proportion of her
inheritance which would have been John's share to this end: the
liberation and redemption of women.

She was no "anti-man," like Vivie. She liked men, if truth were
told, a tiny wee bit more than women. But she wished in the moods
that followed her brother's death in 1894 to be a mother by
adoption, a refuge for the fallen, the bewildered, the unstrung. She
helped young men back into the path of respectability and
wage-earning as well as young women. She was even, when opportunity
offered, a matchmaker.

Being heiress eventually to L4,000 a year (a large income in pre-war
days) and of attractive appearance, she had no lack of suitors, even
though she thought modern dancing inane, and had little skill at
ball-games. I have indicated her appearance by some few phrases
already; but to enable you to visualize her more definitely I might
be more precise. She was a tall woman rather than large built, like
the young Juno when first wooed by Jove. Where she departed from the
Junonian type she turned towards Venus rather than Minerva; in spite
of being a mathematician. You meet with her sisters in physical
beauty among the Americans of Pennsylvania, where, to a stock mainly
Anglo-Saxon, is added a delicious strain of Gallic race; or you see
her again among the Cape Dutch women who have had French Huguenot
great grandparents. It is perhaps rather impertinent continuing
this analysis of her charm, seeing that she lives and flourishes
more than ever, twenty years after the opening of my story; not very
different in outward appearance at 48, as Lady Armstrong--for of
course, as you guess already, she married Major--afterwards Sir
Petworth--Armstrong--than she was at twenty-eight, the partner,
friend and helper of Vivien Warren.

Being in comfortable circumstances, highly educated, handsome,
attractive, with a mezzo-soprano voice of rare beauty and great
skill as a piano-forte accompanyist, she had not only suitors who
took her rejection without bitterness, but hosts of friends. She
knew all the nice London people of her day: Lady Feenix, who in some
ways re