ed her as "odd." They found it impossible to know just what
she meant and felt and thought. In their own parlance "they got no
further." But it must be added that no one attempted to deny the
existence of the inner sanctuary.

In spite of this rather tantalising trait in her character she was
popular--every one liked her, for her natural kindness of heart,
combined with great charm of manner and more than ordinary good looks,
made her gladly welcome wherever she went.

She was an excellent person to confide in, for she accepted the
confidences of other women with sympathetic and frequently helpful
interest; but when it came to returning those confidences--well, that
was quite a different matter.

In her life Philippa had possessed few intimate friends, and the chief
of them had been her father. From him she had inherited, with her dark
hair and straight eyebrows, a certain direct outlook on life. It was
not an attitude of superiority or even of conscious criticism, but more
an instinct for the people and things which were, as she expressed it,
"worth while," a keen desire for the very best, and a preference for
doing without should that best be unobtainable.

Mr. Harford understood as did no one else the depth of pity and the
enormous capacity for affection in the heart of his child, and had from
her earliest youth striven to inculcate self-reliance and
thoughtfulness. "Most women are frivolous and empty-headed fools," he
would assert hotly, "with no strength of mind, and no notion of playing
the game;" and yet, by one of those inexplicable contradictions with
which men of his type so frequently give the lie to their expressed
opinions, he had married a woman in whom the attributes he professed to
admire were conspicuously lacking.

Graceful, charming, and extraordinarily attractive, but with no thought
beyond the pleasures of the moment, Mrs. Harford fluttered through life
like a butterfly.

Mr. Harford's diplomatic appointments had necessitated their living
abroad, and for a surprising number of years his wife had been one of
the acknowledged beauties of Europe. No one could have been prouder of
her than was her husband, who was always her foremost and most devoted
admirer. For him, her beauty and her charm never waned, and to the day
of his death, which occurred some three years before my story opens, he
had regarded her as a most precious possession, to be gazed at,
caressed and guarded, if hardly to