et
manner of the well-trained servant.

Ann Veronica brought her luggage in a cab from the hotel; she tipped the
hotel porter sixpence and overpaid the cabman eighteenpence, unpacked
some of her books and possessions, and so made the room a little
homelike, and then sat down in a by no means uncomfortable arm-chair
before the fire. She had arranged for a supper of tea, a boiled egg, and
some tinned peaches. She had discussed the general question of supplies
with the helpful landlady. "And now," said Ann Veronica surveying her
apartment with an unprecedented sense of proprietorship, "what is the
next step?"

She spent the evening in writing--it was a little difficult--to her
father and--which was easier--to the Widgetts. She was greatly heartened
by doing this. The necessity of defending herself and assuming a
confident and secure tone did much to dispell the sense of being
exposed and indefensible in a huge dingy world that abounded in sinister
possibilities. She addressed her letters, meditated on them for a time,
and then took them out and posted them. Afterward she wanted to get her
letter to her father back in order to read it over again, and, if it
tallied with her general impression of it, re-write it.

He would know her address to-morrow. She reflected upon that with a
thrill of terror that was also, somehow, in some faint remote way,
gleeful.

"Dear old Daddy," she said, "he'll make a fearful fuss. Well, it had to
happen somewhen.... Somehow. I wonder what he'll say?"

CHAPTER THE SIXTH

EXPOSTULATIONS

Part 1

The next morning opened calmly, and Ann Veronica sat in her own room,
her very own room, and consumed an egg and marmalade, and read the
advertisements in the Daily Telegraph. Then began expostulations,
preluded by a telegram and headed by her aunt. The telegram reminded
Ann Veronica that she had no place for interviews except her
bed-sitting-room, and she sought her landlady and negotiated hastily for
the use of the ground floor parlor, which very fortunately was vacant.
She explained she was expecting an important interview, and asked that
her visitor should be duly shown in. Her aunt arrived about half-past
ten, in black and with an unusually thick spotted veil. She raised this
with the air of a conspirator unmasking, and displayed a tear-flushed
face. For a moment she remained silent.

"My dear," she said, when she could get her breath, "you must come home
at once."

Ann Veronic