n. "Well?"

"There's an extraordinary resemblance!" said Lady Holme. "It's
wonderfully like."

"Even you see it! Ashley, you ought to be triumphant--"

"Wonderfully like--Miss Schley," added Lady Holme, cutting gently
through Mrs. Wolfstein's rather noisy outburst.

She turned to the American.

"I have been wondering whether you won't come in one day and see my
little home. Everyone wants you, I know, but if you have a minute some
Wednesday--"

"I'll be delighted."

"Next Wednesday, then?"

"Thanks. Next Wednesday."

"Cadogan Square--the red book will tell you. But I'll send cards. I must
be running away now."

When she had gone, followed by Robin, Mrs. Wolfstein said to Miss
Schley:

"She's been conquered by fear of Philadelphia."

"Wait till I give her Noo York," returned the American, placidly.

It seemed that Lady Holme's secret hostility to Miss Schley was returned
by the vestal virgin.

CHAPTER VII

LORD HOLME seldom went to parties and never to private views. He thought
such things "all damned rot." Few functions connected with the
arts appealed to his frankly Philistine spirit, which rejoiced in
celebrations linked with the glories of the body; boxing and wrestling
matches, acrobatic performances, weight-lifting exhibitions, and so
forth. He regretted that bear-baiting and cock-fighting were no longer
legal in England, and had, on two occasions, travelled from London to
South America solely in order to witness prize fights.

As he so seldom put in an appearance at smart gatherings he had not
yet encountered Miss Schley, nor had he heard a whisper of her
much-talked-of resemblance to his wife. Her name was known to him as
that of a woman whom one or two of his "pals" began to call a "deuced
pretty girl" but his interest in her was not greatly awakened. The
number of deuced pretty girls that had been in his life, and in the
lives of his pals, was legion. They came and went like feathers dancing
on the wind. The mere report of them, therefore, casual and drifting,
could not excite his permanent attention, or fix their names and the
record of their charms in his somewhat treacherous memory. Lady Holme
had not once mentioned the American to him. She was a woman who knew how
to be silent, and sometimes she was silent by instinct without saying to
herself why.

Lord Holme never appeared on her Wednesdays; and, indeed, those days
were a rather uncertain factor among the London joys. If Lady H