ral
husband-hunting years spent in India, where her father had held a post
in the Indian Civil Service.

It was one of those rather incomprehensible happenings of life that she
had been left still blooming on her virgin stem. It would have been
difficult to guess her exact age. She owned to thirty-four, and a
decade ago, when she had first joined her father in India, she must
have possessed a certain elfish prettiness of her own. Now, thanks to
those years spent under a tropical sun, she was a trifle faded and
passee-looking.

Following upon the advent of Roger and his cousin the conversation
became general for a few minutes, then Lady Gertrude drew her son
towards a French window opening on to the garden--a garden immaculately
laid out, with flower-beds breaking the expanse of lawn at just the
correct intervals--and eventually she and Roger passed out of the room
to discuss with immense seriousness the shortcomings of the gardener as
exemplified in the shape of one of the geranium beds.

"_You_ won't like it here!" observed Isobel Carson rather bluntly, when
the two girls were left alone.

"Why shouldn't I?" Nan smiled.

"Because you won't fit in at all. You'll be like a rocket battering
about in the middle of a set piece."

Isobel lacked neither brains nor observation, though she had been wise
enough to conceal both these facts from Lady Gertrude.

"Don't you like it here, then?"

Isobel regarded her thoughtfully, as though speculating how far she
dared be frank.

"Of course I like it. But it's Hobson's choice with me," she replied
rather grimly. "When my father died I was left with very little money
and no special training. Result--I spent a hateful year as nursery
governess to a couple of detestable brats. Then Aunt Gertrude invited
me here on a visit--and that visit has prolonged itself up till the
present moment. She finds me very useful, you know," she added
cynically.

"Yes, I suppose she does," answered Nan, with some embarrassment. She
felt no particular desire to hear a resume of Miss Carson's past life.
There was something in the girl which repelled her.

As though she sensed the other's distaste to the trend the conversation
had taken, Miss Carson switched briskly off to something else, and by
the time Lady Gertrude returned with Roger, suggesting that they should
go in to lunch, Nan had forgotten that odd feeling of repulsion which
Isobel had first aroused in her, and had come to