gs those poor girls up always at this time, and takes
them to some impossible old dressmaker of her own in the daytime, and to
Shakespeare or a concert at night, and returns with them equipped in more
hideous garments each year. It is positively cruel," said Lady Ver, as we
went up the stairs to their _appartement_.

There they were, sitting round the tea-table just as at Tryland--Kirstie
and Jean embroidering and knitting, and the other two reading new
catalogues of books for their work.

Lady Ver began to tease them. She asked them all sorts of questions about
their new frocks, and suggested they had better go to Paris once in a way.
Lady Katherine was like ice. She strongly disapproved of my being with her
niece, one could see.

The connection with the family she hoped would be ended with my visit to
Tryland. Malcolm was arriving in town, too, we gathered, and Lady Ver left
a message to ask him to dine to-night.

Then we got away.

"If one of those lumps of suet had a spark of spirit they would go
straight to the devil," Lady Ver said as we went down the stairs. "Think
of it--ties and altar-cloths in London! Mercifully they could not dine
to-night. I had to ask them, and they generally come once while they are
up--the four girls and Aunt Katherine--and it is with the greatest
difficulty I can collect four young men for them if they get the least
hint whom they are to meet. I generally secure a couple of socially
budding Jews, because I feel the subscriptions for their charities which
they will pester whoever they do sit next for are better filched from the
Hebrew than from some pretty, needy Guardsman. Oh, what a life!"

She was so kind to me on the way back; she said she hated leaving me alone
on the morrow, and that I must settle now what I was going to do or she
would not go. I said I would go to Claridge's, where Mrs. Carruthers and I
had always stayed, and remain quietly alone with Veronique. I could afford
it for a week. So we drove there and made the arrangement.

"It is absolutely impossible for you to go on like this, dear child," she
said. "You must have a chaperone; you are far too pretty to stay alone in
a hotel. What _can_ I do for you?"

I felt so horribly uncomfortable I was really at my wits' end. Oh, it is
no fun being an adventuress, after all, if you want to keep your friends
of the world as well.

"Perhaps it won't matter if I don't see any one for a few days," I said.
"I will write to P