isturbing as at twenty.
At this date Eva was twenty-six. She had a rather small, white face,
which was a mask to the casual observer, and the very mirror of her
feelings to anyone with eyes to read its signs.

'I tell you what you are like,' said Clive to her once: 'you are like a
fine racehorse, always on the quiver.'

Yet many people considered her cold and impassive. Her walk and bearing
showed a sensitive independence, and when she spoke it was usually in
tones of command. The girls in the shop, where she was a power second
only to Ezra Brunt, were a little afraid of her, chiefly because she
poured terrible scorn on their small affectations, jealousies, and
vendettas. But they liked her because, in their own phrase, 'there was
no nonsense about' this redoubtable woman. She hated shams and
make-believes with a bitter and ruthless hatred. She was the heiress to
at least five thousand a year, and knew it well, but she never
encouraged her father to complicate their simple mode of life with the
pomps of wealth. They lived in a house with a large garden at Pireford,
which is on the summit of the steep ridge between the Five Towns and
Oldcastle, and they kept two servants and a coachman, who was also
gardener. Eva paid the servants good wages, and took care to get good
value therefor.

'It's not often I have any bother with my servants,' she would say, 'for
they know that if there is any trouble I would just as soon clear them
out and put on an apron and do the work myself.'

She was an accomplished house-mistress, and could bake her own bread: in
towns not one woman in a thousand can bake. With the coachman she had
little to do, for she could not rid herself of a sentimental objection
to the carriage--it savoured of 'airs'; when she used it she used it as
she might use a tramcar. It was her custom, every day except Saturday,
to walk to the shop about eleven o'clock, after her house had been set
in order. She had been thoroughly trained in the business, and had spent
a year at a first-rate shop in High Street, Kensington. Millinery was
her speciality, and she still watched over that department with a
particular attention; but for some time past she had risen beyond the
limitations of departments, and assisted her father in the general
management of the vast concern. In commercial aptitude she resembled the
typical Frenchwoman.

Although he was her father, Ezra Brunt had the wit to recognise her
talents, and he alway