utifully on a desert island, if her trunks had been washed
ashore with her; she had fastened a knot of rose-coloured ribbon in her
hair, and wore it on one side just over her eye with an unstudied and
perfectly successful effect.

'I suppose you know,' said Jane, 'that you are extraordinarily pretty,
Kitty?'

'I spend a fortune on dresses which look cheap,' said Kitty, 'and so
people think I am nice-looking.'

Jane thought such humility on the part of any one so pretty as Miss
Sherard was a sign in her that she must be out of spirits; so she said,
'Oh, nonsense, Kitty!' in a very affectionate way, and begged that Miss
Sherard would smoke a cigarette if she felt inclined.

'No,' said Kitty, 'I don't think I want to smoke.'

Jane drew her chair nearer the big chair on the hearth-rug, and,
blowing out the candles, the two girls sat by the firelight.

Tenderness, as every one knows, is an ineradicable instinct of
womanhood. Kitty Sherard might smoke cigarettes and drive in a very
high dogcart, but just then her heart felt very nearly breaking, and
she was so grateful to Jane for blowing out the lights and sitting near
her that in defiance of her mood she began to laugh.

'What a moist party we were in church this morning!' she said, smiling
broadly, and ignoring the fact that her eyes had tears in them. 'Miss
Abingdon looked conscientiously tearful, and Mrs. Avory applied herself
to her pocket-handkerchief as soon as the canon began his usual joyful
Christmas message about empty chairs and absent friends.'

'Poor Mrs. Avory!' said Jane, 'weeping has become a sort of habit with
her, and tears come very easily. If we had trimmed parasols and eaten
tinned food for supper for a year or two, Kitty, I imagine we should
become very tearful too.'

Miss Sherard unloosed the rose-coloured ribbon which bound her hair,
and beginning to brush out her curls she said 'Yes,' slowly, and turned
to other topics.

'Do you ever feel quite old, Jane?' she said at last. 'I do,
especially during a long frost. I feel as if I had tried every single
bit of pleasure that there is in the world and had come through it and
out on the other side, and found that none of it was the least little
bit of good.'

'Heaven send us a thaw soon!' exclaimed Jane.

'I quite adore my father,' said Kitty with emphasis, 'and I think he
helps to keep me young; but it is rather pathetic, isn't it, that any
one should think one so perfect as he thinks