s Loder conveyed a sense of
superiority. Toni was made to feel that this newcomer knew just why she
had been sent for--understood that it was in reality to Toni's
incapacity that she owed her present position; and Toni felt, with a
miserable intensity, that Miss Loder looked upon her as some brilliant
sixth-form girl would survey a kindergarten child, with a kindly,
half-amused, half-contemptuous tolerance.

Never had Toni so desperately longed to be clever as during that first
week of Miss Loder's secretaryship; and never had she felt herself to be
so ignorant, so childish, so futile a companion for a man like Owen.

At first Miss Loder had eaten her lunch in solitude. It was Toni's
suggestion that she should join them in the dining-room, and Owen,
supposing that Toni felt it a little discourteous to condemn the other
woman to a lonely meal, agreed cordially to the plan.

Over her luncheon Miss Loder laid aside her rather scholastic, manner,
and talked pleasantly in a quite refreshingly frivolous way; but try as
she might Toni never felt at ease in her presence; and gradually she
dropped out of the conversation until she sat for the greater part of
the meal in silence.

Owen, absorbed in his book, did not notice her taciturnity, and though
he responded politely to Miss Loder's chatter, it was evident he was not
captivated by her undoubted social gifts to the extent of forgetting the
purpose of her presence.

As for Miss Loder, Toni had guessed her attitude towards Mr. Rose's wife
correctly enough. To the clever, highly-trained mind of the Girton girl
Toni's whole personality was so appallingly feeble.

"The brains of a hen, and the soul, probably, of a chorus-girl." So Miss
Loder, quite unjustly, summed up Toni. "Married the man to get out of a
life of drudgery, I expect, and is as much of a companion to her husband
as a pretty little Persian cat would be. Why _will_ these nice men marry
such nonentities, I wonder? She is bound to be a drag on him all her
days."

For all her shrewdness Miss Loder never dreamed that her estimation of
Toni was clearly evident to the person concerned. In her fatally orderly
mind Toni was classified as a "type"--the type of the pretty, useless,
childish wife; and Miss Loder never looked for any variation of the type
when once she had labelled the specimen.

That his now secretary did her work admirably Owen realized with intense
gratitude. For all her modern self-assertiveness Mis