; that she would not spoil her pretty hair by screwing it
up in her usual unbecoming manner. She understood, studying a certain
photograph in a drawer--what drawer was safe from Milly's tidyings?--and
dressed her hair as like it as she knew how, with a secret bitterness of
heart.

Mildred had found a diary, methodically kept by Milly, of great use to
her, and although incapable herself of keeping one regularly, she had
continued it in a desultory manner, noting down whatever she thought
might be useful for Milly's guidance. For whatever the feelings of the
two personalities towards each other, there was a terrible closeness of
union between them. Their indivisibility in the eyes of the world made
their external interests inevitably one. New friends and acquaintances
Mildred had noted down, with useful remarks upon them. She was not
confidential on the subject of Maxwell Davison, but she gave the bare
necessary information.

It was now late in the Summer Term and her bedroom chimney-piece was
richly decorated with invitation cards. Among others there was an
invitation to a garden-party at Lady Margaret Hall. Milly put on a fresh
flowered muslin dress, apparently unworn, that she found hanging in one
of the deep wall-cupboards of the old house, and a coarse burnt-straw
hat, trimmed with roses and black ribbon, which became her marvellously
well. All the scruples of an apostle of hygienic dress, all the
uneasiness of an economist at the prospect of unpaid bills, disappeared
before the pleasure of a young woman face to face with an extremely
pretty reflection in a pier-glass. That glass, an oval in a light
mahogany frame, of the Regency period, if not earlier, was one of
Mildred's finds in the slums of St. Ebbes.

She walked across the Parks, where the Cricket Match of the season was
drawing a crowd, meaning to come out by a gate below Lady Margaret Hall,
the gardens and buildings of which did not then extend to the Cherwell.
In their place were a few tennis-grounds and a path leading to a
boat-house, shared by a score or more of persons. While she was still
coming across the grass of the Parks, a man in flannels, very white in
the sun, came towards her from the gate for which she was making. He
must have recognized her from a long way off. He was a striking-looking
man of middle age, walking with a free yet indolent stride that carried
him along much faster than it appeared to do.

Milly had no idea who the stranger wa