DORA WEST was trimming her hat. It was a straw hat that had cost a shilling or two when it came into her deft hands, and the trimming would only prove to have cost a shilling or two when it became attached to the hat, and leaving the deft hands was put onto her extremely pretty head. But by that time the hat would certainly have become a very pretty hat. This she was explaining with great volubility to her friend.

“You are rich, darling May,” she said, “and in consequence your attitude toward hats is a little opulent and vulgar. I can put the feathers and the flags and the birds’ eggs in exactly the same place as Biondinetti, or whoever it is who sells you hats.”

“No, not exactly,” said Mary, with the quietness that real conviction brings. She was quite certain about that point, and so did not care to shout over it. It is only when people are not certain about what they say, that they drown their want of conviction in arguments. Conviction always swims.

Dora had several pins in her mouth, and so did not reply at once. In itself the pin-reason was excellent, and more excellent was the fact that she did not wish to reply, knowing the quiet truth of Mary’s conviction, especially since she could not settle the exact angle at which a very large white feather should be put. It pierced the hat, once inward once outward, that was Biondinetti all over, but where in heaven’s name ought it to start from? So she only made a little impatient noise with her lips, and even that was difficult, since there was a danger of causing a pin to be sucked into her mouth. But she made it successfully. She poised the feather a moment, focussing its appearance against the hat. The effect produced by the impatient noise was sufficient to ensure her against any immediate reply. Then suddenly the inspiration came, and with a pair of tiny scissors she cut a strand or two in the straw and stuck the quill feather through the holes.

“There,” she said, “and you pay Biondinetti two guineas for doing that. I can’t, and I wouldn’t if I could. Austell wrote to me last week and said the swans were moulting, and I telegraphed—that cost sixpence and a little thought, instead of two guineas—to tell him to send me big wing feathers. He’s a dreadful ass; we all know that, but he had the sense to see I wanted feathers, and to catch a swan and pluck——”

“What a disgusting butcher,” said May. “I don’t mean butcher, I mean vivisectionist.”

“And how do you think you get your feathers, darling?” asked Dora.

“I don’t know; I never ask. The hat comes from the shop.”

“Then don’t ask now, because I will tell you. Your horrid shop has birds killed, and then plucks them. It does; you can’t deny it. Whereas with me the swan was just moulting, and Austell assisted Nature, which we all do. He caught its head in a landing-net and it tried to peck, he says——”

Dora West stopped suddenly in the middle of these surprising remarks, and held out the hat at arm’s length in order to observe the effect of the feather. She had one of those enchanting faces that are overwhelmingly pretty for no particular reason. You could, if you chose, argue her prettiness away, by maintaining with justification that no single feature on it had warrantable claims. They were all passable, it is true, but it was not clear how it came about that the sum of them was so delicious. Her eyes were gray, and had nothing striking to recommend them, her nose turned up at the tip far too markedly to be able to claim beauty, and the mouth was quite certainly too large. Yet even allowing for the charm of her extreme youth and the vigour and vividness of her vitality, there was no accounting for the supreme prettiness that was there. So the sensible thing was to stop arguing and look at it again, and more sensible yet, to say something that should make her laugh. For her laugh was the most enchanting thing of all; then every feature laughed, there was no telling where it began or where it ended. May before now had declared that from quite a distance off, when Dora’s back was turned, she had in a ballroom seen she was amused because the back of her neck and her shoulders were laughing so much. “Oh, Nature wants a lot of assistance,” she went on. “She is perfectly hopeless if you leave her to herself. Look at the flowers even, which are quite the nicest thing she does. Roses, for instance; all she could think of in the way of roses was the ordinary wild dog rose. I don’t say it is bad, but how paltry, if you have had simply millions of years to invent roses in. Then man comes along, who is the only really unnatural being, and in quite a few years invents all the heavenly roses which we see now. Of course Nature did it, in a sense, but she did it with his assistance.”

“But why do you call man unnatural?” asked May.

“Why? Because he saw at once how stupid Nature was, and had to invent all the things that make life tolerable. He lit fires, and built houses, and made laws, and motor-cars, and shops, and—and boats and button hooks. Motor-cars, too; all that Nature could think of in the way of locomotion was horses.”

The feathers were inserted in absolutely the right place, and Dora breathed a heavy sigh of satisfaction, laid the hat down on the end of the sofa, hovered over the tea table for a moment, and selected an enormous bun.

“And Nature gives us brains,” she continued, with her mouth full, “and the moment we begin to use them, as I have been doing over that hat, which is Biondinetti, she decrees that we shall be so hungry that we have to stop and eat instead. The same with talking: she gives us a tongue to talk with and after quite a few minutes, talking makes us hungry too, and we have to use our tongue to help us to swallow. Did you know you swallowed with your tongue, darling? I never did till yesterday. I thought I swallowed with my throat, but apparently the tongue helps. That’s why we can’t talk with our mouths full as I am doing.”

May Thurston looked at the hat on the end of the sofa for a while, and then transferred her gaze to her friend.

“I don’t think I agree with you,” she said. “At least I allow that many people don’t know what being natural means, but I think all the nicest people are natural. You, for instance, and me and Mrs. Osborne last night at her dance. Never before have I seen a hostess really enjoying herself at her own ball. She stood at the top of the stairs and beamed, she danced and beamed——”

“And never before have you seen a person like Mrs. Osborne dance,” remarked Dora.

“Well, not often. Anyhow, she enjoyed herself tremendously and was perfectly natural.”

Dora shook her head.

“It won’t do, darling,” she said. “I allow that Mrs. Osborne beamed all the time and enjoyed herself enormously. But why? Because everybody was there. Was she ever so much pleased at Sheffield, do you suppose, or wherever it was they came from? I am sure she was not. But last night she was pleased because every duchess and marchioness who counts at all was there, as well as heaps that don’t count at all. She’s a snob: probably the finest ever seen, and by what process of reasoning you arrive at the fact that a snob is natural is beyond me. I agree that heaps of nice people are snobs, but snobbishness is in itself the most artificial quality of an artificial age. Snobs are the crowning and passionate protest against Nature——”

“Oh well,” said May in deprecation of this rather lengthy harangue, “I didn’t mean to rouse you, Dora.”

“I daresay not, and in that case you have done so without meaning. But really, when you say that Mrs. Osborne is natural I am bound to protest. You might as well say that your mother is.”

“Oh no, I mightn’t,” said May quite calmly. “It would be simply silly to call mother natural. She only does things because they are ‘the thing.’ She spends her whole life in doing ‘the thing.’ And yet I don’t know—oh, Dora, what very odd people women are when they grow up! Shall you and I be as odd, do you think? I love mother, and so do you, and we both of us love yours, don’t we? but they are very, very odd people.”

Dora gave a little shriek of laughter.

“Oh don’t,” she said. “I want to talk about snobs a little more.”

“Well, I’m sure you’ve often told me that mother was one,” remarked May.

“Yes, the darling; she is, isn’t she? She is the most delicious sort of snob. A month ago she wouldn’t know the Osbornes, and merely said, ‘I have no doubt they are very honest people,’ with her nose at the same angle toward earth as is the Matterhorn; while a week ago she was clamouring for an invitation to the dance last night. In the interval it had become ‘the thing’ to know the Osbornes. My mother saw it was going to be ‘the thing’ to know them long ago, and called at Park Lane almost before they had washed the white blobs of paint off the windows, or hung up those shields of heraldic glass on the stairs——”

“Oh, no, is there heraldic glass on the stairs?” asked May, in a slightly awe-struck tone. “I never saw it.”

Dora, as her friend often declared, really did not always play fair. There had quite distinctly been the satirical note in her own allusion to the heraldic glass, but as soon as May reflected that in the appreciative reverence of her reply, Dora was down upon her at once.

“And why shouldn’t they have heraldic glass as much as your people or mine?” she asked smartly. “They’ve got exactly as many grandfathers and grandmothers as we have, and there’s not the slightest reason to doubt that Mrs. Osborne was a Miss Parkins, and Mr. Parkins’s heir, who, I expect, was far more respectable than my mother’s father, who drank himself to death, though mother always calls it cerebral hÆmorrhage. Oh, May, we are all snobs, and I’m not sure the worst snobbishness of all isn’t shown by those who say they came over with William the Conqueror or were descended from Edward the Fourth. Probably the Osbornes didn’t come over with William the Conqueror but were here long before, only they don’t happen to know who they were.”

“I know, that is just it,” said May, calmly. “They don’t know who they were, and yet they put up their coats of arms.”

Dora looked at her friend in contempt.

“I suppose you think you have scored over that,” she said.

“Not in the least. I am only pointing out perfectly obvious things.”

“Then why do it?” said Dora. “What I am pointing out are not perfectly obvious things. At least they appear not to be to you. The whole affair is a game, stars and garters and ancestors, and coats of arms is all a game. Oh, I don’t say that it isn’t great fun. But it is absurd to take it seriously. What can it matter to you or me whether great-grandpapa was a peer or a bootblack? It only amuses us to think that he was a peer. And if it amuses Mrs. Osborne to think that Mr. Parkins had a coat of arms at all, why shouldn’t she put it up in the hall window? And since, as I said, she was the only child, of course she quarters with the Osborne arms. It’s one of the rules. I believe you are jealous of them, because they are richer than your horrid family.”

Nothing ever roused May except a practical assault upon her personal comfort, and Dora seldom attempted to rouse her. It was invariably hopeless and the present attempt only added another to the list of her failures.

“I think that is partly true,” said May. “I don’t see why common people should have the best of everything. They only have to invent a button or a razor, and all that life offers is theirs. I think it’s deplorable, but it doesn’t make me angry any more than a wet day makes me angry, unless I am absolutely caught in the rain with a new hat. As to coats of arms and things, I think it is rather pleasant to know that one’s grandfather was a gentleman.”

Dora waved her arms wildly.

“But he probably wasn’t!” she screamed. “Mine wasn’t, he was the wicked one, you know, and did awful things. Much worse than Mrs. Osborne’s probably ever dreamed of. Mrs. Osborne’s great-grandfather would certainly have cut mine, if he had had the chance——”

“He wouldn’t have had the chance,” remarked May. “And also Mrs. Osborne herself would cut nobody, who would—would lend lustre to her house. Oh, Dora, let’s stop. It isn’t any good. You are a democrat, and a radical and a socialist, and really it doesn’t matter. Besides I haven’t seen you for—oh, well, nearly twenty-four hours. What has happened?”

Dora got up.

“I don’t think I can stop,” she said. “Because I want to know what you really think about certain things. Two heads are better than one, you know, even when mine is one of them. Oh, by the way, Austell has let Grote to the Osbornes. They have taken it for seven years from the end of July. It was mother’s doing I think. I—oh, May, you may call me a radical and a socialist and anything else you choose, but I can’t quite see Mrs. Osborne there. She’ll fill it with plush. I know she will. After all, I expect mother is right. I suppose it is better to pay some of your debts, and have other people putting plush monkeys into your house than go on as Austell has been doing. I expect I should be just the same if he was my son instead of my brother. It doesn’t seem to matter much what one’s brother does, as long as he doesn’t wear his hair long, or cheat at cards. But I daresay it’s different if he’s your son.”

Dora gave a great sigh, and was silent. In spite of that series of statements which had led May Thurston, quite reasonably, to call her a radical and a socialist, there was some feeling within her, rather more intimate, rather more herself, that made her dislike the idea of the Osbornes living in Grote, which had always been her home. The Austell finances, especially for the past two or three years, had been precarious, and though her mother had a jointure that would enable her and Dora to live quite comfortably in her house in Eaton Place, and at the little bungalow at Deal, it had been necessary before now to let the house in Eaton Place during the months of the season, and live at Deal, and to let the bungalow at Deal (it was of the more spacious sort) during August and September, and encamp, so to speak, in a corner of Grote. For Jim Austell, her brother, it could not be denied, was not a person who could possibly be described as dependable. His mother had made the most prolonged attempt to describe him as such, but without success, and she had at length seen the futility of clinging to Grote, a huge Jacobean mansion with an enormous park. In the latter, being of sandy soil, a public golf links had been started, which brought in £192 a year, while neighbouring farmers grazed their beasts on other portions. The total receipts, however, about paid for the flower beds and the trimming of the exquisite bank of rhododendrons that grew round the lake, and after a year or so of trial, the scheme had been pronounced financially unsound, and for the last six months the place had been in search of a tenant. Austell had hoped that his well-known skill at bridge and his knowledge of horses might save him from the extremity of letting it. In this he had been disappointed; they had but contributed to the speed at which it was necessary to do so.

All this, which was part of the habitual environment of Dora’s mind, part of the data under which she lived, passed through it or was presented to it, like a familiar picture, in the space of the sigh that concluded her last speech. It was no longer any use thinking about these things; Grote had been let to the Osbornes, the bungalow at Deal had also been let for August, and till September she and her mother were going to “live in their boxes.” After all, they had done that, as everybody else had, often before, and for much longer periods than one month, but it was the first time that they had been compelled to live in their boxes with no house (except Eaton Place in August) to flee unto. And, at this moment the change struck Dora. For week after week before now, she had stayed with friends, knowing (though not thinking of it) that all the time there was home behind it all. True, now that Grote had been let, it would have been possible to live in the bungalow at Deal, but the latter had been let while the former was still uncertain, and Dora suddenly felt a sense of homelessness that was not quite comfortable. In two weeks from now they went to the Thurstons, then there were three more visits, then, no doubt, if they chose, many more visits, but there was nothing behind; there was no home. Meantime, the Osbornes grabbed homes wherever they chose, they built a palace in Park Lane, they took Grote from her own impecunious family, and as Mrs. Osborne had told her mother last night, Mr. O. had a fancy for a bit of stalking for self and friends in the autumn, and had taken a little box up in Sutherland. She, however, was going to settle down at Grote at the end of the season, and did not intend to go North. There had been badinage over this, it appeared, between her and Mr. O.; and he threatened her with an action for divorce on the grounds of desertion. And Dora felt much less socialistic and far more inclined to agree with May on the iniquity of common people having all they wanted simply because they invented a button. If only she could invent a button.

Dora, as has already been seen, was apt to be slightly discursive. She had one of those effervescent minds to which every topic as it comes on the board instantly suggests another, and in half a dozen sentences she was apt to speak of half a dozen totally different things, each in turn being swiftly abandoned for some fresh and more absorbing topic which each opened up. She had begun a moment before with telling May that she wanted her advice, and before that was asked or offered, before indeed, the subject on which it was desired was so much as mentioned, she had darted away afresh, poising, dragon-fly fashion, in the direction of Grote, and the letting of it to the Osbornes. The Osbornes indeed had been the connecting link, and now she went straight back via the Osbornes to the point from which she had started.

“Yes, I want your advice May,” she repeated, “or I think I do. It’s quite serious, at least it’s beginning to be quite serious, and there are so many dreadfully funny things connected with it. Yes, Mr. Osborne has asked leave to call upon mother this afternoon at six, and it’s half-past five now. Oh, dear, oh, dear! I suppose he found out in a book that that sort of thing was done a hundred years ago, and he wishes to be correct. The Osbornes are absolutely correct if you think of it. Every one went in to supper in the right order last night, which never happens at any other house I have ever been to, and where does he get those extraordinary good looks from? Oh, I don’t mean Mr. Osborne. How can you be so silly—but him. Yes, I’m telling it all very clearly, aren’t I, so I hope you understand. Perhaps Mrs. Osborne was a beauty once, you can’t tell.”

That May perfectly understood this extraordinary farrago of observations said less for her powers of perspicacity than might have been supposed, for Dora was not alluding to any new thing, but to a subject that had often before been mentioned between them. And Dora went on, still discursively but intelligibly.

“It’s coming to the crisis, you see,” she said. “Mr. Osborne’s call on mother is of a formal nature. He is going to ask permission for Claude to pay his addresses to me. He will use those very words, unless mother says ‘yes’ before he gets so far. And then I shall have to make up my mind. At least I’m not sure that I shall; I believe it’s made up already. And yet I can’t be sure. May, I feel just like a silly sentimental girl in an impossible feuilleton. He thrills me, isn’t it awful? But he does. Thrills! I don’t believe any boy was ever so good-looking. And then suddenly in the middle of my thrill, it all stops with a jerk, just because he says that somebody is a very ‘handsome lady.’ Why shouldn’t he say ‘handsome lady’? He said he thought mother was such a handsome lady, and I nearly groaned out loud. And then I looked at him again or something, and I didn’t care what he said. And he’s nice too. I know he’s nice, and he’s got excellent manners, and always gets up when a lady, handsome or not, comes into the room, instead of lounging in his chair as Austell does and all other young men nowadays except a few like Claude who aren’t exactly our sort. And he’s kind and he’s good. Am I in love with him? For heaven’s sake, tell me.”

Dora paused a moment and then took a cigarette from a box that stood on the mantelpiece, and lit it. She never smoked cigarettes; she only lit them, and the mere fact that she lit one was indicative of extreme absorption in something else.

“You’re engaged, May,” she said, “so you ought to know. Else what is the use of your being engaged. What do you feel when that angel Harry comes into the room?”

May could answer that quite easily.

“Oh, I feel as if it was me coming into the room,” she said. “I feel as if I am not in the room, since you put it like that, unless he is.”

The conversation had been flippant enough up till this moment, though, as a matter of fact, Dora, being inconsequential by nature, often gave the note of flippancy, when she was in earnest. Both of the girls, in any case, were quite serious now. And out of the depth of her twenty years’ wisdom, May proceeded to draw a bucket full for Dora, who was only nineteen.

“Oh, I expect you are in love,” she said. “At least I expect you are feeling as if you were. I understand perfectly about the thrill, though it sounds so dreadfully Family Herald when it is said. But one does thrill. I believe that thrill is a pretty good guide. I don’t usually thrill, in fact I never had thrilled till I saw Harry. But I always thrill at him. I suppose all girls feel the same when they fall in love. I suppose people on bank holidays thrill when they change hats, or eat winkles. We are all common then. At least you may call it common if you choose. I don’t see why you should. It’s IT.”

“You haven’t told me about me,” remarked Dora.

May Thurston shifted her position slightly. It was not done with any idea of manoeuvre. She was the least dramatic of girls, and she only shifted because she felt a little uncomfortable. It was new to her also to take the lead. Dora usually strode ahead.

“I can’t advise you about things of that sort,” she said. “I’m old-fashioned, you see——”

“Oh, are you, darling?” murmured Dora. “Nobody would have guessed it.”

“But I am over things like that, old-fashioned and romantic. I think love in a cottage would be quite ideal, not because a cottage is ideal—I would much sooner not live in one—but because love is. And, oh, Dora, I can just advise you not to marry him unless you are in love with him. I daresay heaps of girls make very nice sensible marriages, where there’s lots of money, and where they each like the other, but you do miss such a lot by not falling in love. You miss—you miss it all.”

Dora scrutinized her friend for a moment, her head a little on one side, with something of the manner of a bright-eyed thrush listening for the movement of the worm that it hopes to breakfast on.

“But there’s something in your mind, which you are not saying, May,” she remarked. “I can hear it rustling.”

“Yes. There are just two little things that make me wonder whether you are in love with him. The first is you said you were sure he was good! That is no reason at all. You don’t fall in love with a person because he’s good. You esteem and like him—or it’s possible to conceive doing so—because he’s good, but you don’t love him for that reason.”

Dora gave a little purr of laughter.

“Oh, May, you are heavenly,” she said. “But surely it’s an advantage if your promesso is good.”

“Oh, certainly, but nobody in love stops to think about that.”

“I see. Well, what is the second thing that makes you wonder?”

May looked at her with her large, serious blue eyes.

“What you said about being brought up with a jerk in the middle of your thrill, when he spoke of a handsome lady. As if it mattered! Yet somehow it does to you, or it would not bring you up with a jerk!”

“And you think it doesn’t matter?” asked Dora.

“Of course not if you love him, and if you don’t, in the name of all that is sensible, don’t marry him. That sort of marriage is called sensible, I know. It is really the wildest and most awful risk.”

Dora stared.

“How do you know?” she asked.

“Of course I know, simply because I’m in love with Harry. Fancy being tied to a man for life without that! Gracious, it’s nearly six, and he was to call for me at home at six.”

“Oh, you can keep him waiting ten minutes,” said Dora. “We’ve only just begun to talk about the great point.”

May shook her head.

“I could keep him waiting,” she said, “but I couldn’t keep myself. I must go. Darling, I long to hear more, only you see I can’t stop now. Come and see me to-morrow morning. I shall be in till lunch time.”

Dora shrugged her shoulders, not in the least naturally but of design.

“I think it’s a pity to fall in love then, if it makes one so selfish,” she remarked.

“No doubt you are right, darling. Good-bye,” said May.

It was, as May had said, close on six, and in anticipation of Mr. Osborne’s arrival, Dora removed herself from the little fore-and-aft drawing room which looked out in front through two windows on to Eaton Place, and at the back through one on to the little square yard behind the house, and went upstairs to her bedroom, taking the hat with one swan feather fixed in it and the other still unplaced, with her. But even the hat, though in this extraordinarily interesting condition with regard to its trimming, failed at the moment to make good any footing in her mind. It was not that hats were less interesting than before (especially to the maker and wearer) but that during this last month something else had grown infinitely more interesting than anything else had ever been; the standard of interest possible in this world which Dora found so full of enchanting things, had been immeasurably raised. Life hitherto had been brilliantly full of surface brightnesses, but it seemed to her now as if life, the sunlike spirit of life, which shone with so continuous a lustre on her, struck the surface of herself no longer, but penetrated down into depths that she had not yet dreamed of. There, in those depths, so it seemed to her, she sat now, while on the surface, so to speak, there floated all the pleasant and humorous and friendly things of life. The hat she held in her hand floated there, dogs swam about there and flowers sparkled, May Thurston was there and friends innumerable. But as in the exquisite picture of the birth of Eve by Watts, a big photograph of which hung over her bed, it was as if all these were but a skin, a rind which even now was peeling off her, showing beneath the form and the wonder of the woman herself.

She sat in the window seat, and the hot air of the tired afternoon streamed slowly and gently in, just lifting and letting lie again the bright brown of her hair. Outside the hundred noises of the busy town mingled and melted together, and seemed to her to form, even as the blending of all colours forms the apparently colourless white, a general hush and absence of noise. Rousing herself for a moment, and consciously listening, she could detect and name the ingredients of it; there was the sharp clip of horses’ hoofs, the whirr of motors, the chiding of swifts, the agitated chirp of sparrows over some doubtful treasure of the roadway, the tapping of heels on the hot pavement, the cool whisper of cleansing from a water cart, and the noise of news being cried round the corner. But all these were blended together and formed not confused noise but quietness, and from the quietness of her face, and the immobility of her hands which were usually so active, you might have guessed that she was tired or bored, and found this hour pass heavily. But a second glance would have erased so erroneous an impression: there was a smouldering brightness in her eye, and ever and again a little trembling at the corners of her mouth which might develop into a smile, or, equally easily almost, be the precursor of flooded eyes.

For the last month now she had had moods like this, when she dived down from the froth and effervescence of her surface mind and sat below in deep and remote waters. It was not that she had lost the power of living on the surface, for this afternoon with her friend she had been quite completely there, until toward the end of their talk she had felt that she was being beckoned down again and knew that when May left her she would sink into these depths that till lately she had not known existed. Yet the path that had led to them had been quite natural; all her life she had above all things loved beauty, whether of waves or birds or sunsets, or human beings. Thus it was without any sense of a strange or unusual thing happening to her that she had admired frankly and naturally the dark merry face of this young man. He had taken her into dinner once or twice; he had danced with her a half dozen times. And then, suddenly and quite unexpectedly, he belonged to the surface of things no longer as far as she was concerned. Something smote at her heart, and the flowers and birds peeled away like rind as from Eve when she was born, and the woman shone within.

And indeed, there was little in all this to wonder at, for in spite of crabbed and cynical proverbs about beauty being only skin-deep, it remains and will remain to those who have eyes themselves, the wand of the enchanter. No doubt the enchantment can be made without the wand, but when eyes are keen, and blood is young, how vastly more easily is the enchantment effected with the aid of that weapon. And Claude to her thinking, before ever she even wondered if she was falling in love with him, was certainly not without the wand. He was dark, a potent colour to her who was so fair; hair nearly black grew low and crisp on the forehead, and eyebrows quite black met above his brown eyes. Then came the lean, smooth oval of his face, a mouth rather full-lipped, and a squarish chin. Often before he spoke, especially if he had, as not infrequently happened, some rather determined remark to make, he jerked his head a little back and put out his chin. It was a gesture of extraordinary decision, and “oh,” said Dora to herself now, as she thought of it, “I do like a man to know his mind.”

The same signs of knowing his mind were visible, too, in his movements. He never strayed about a room, or leaned against anything. If he purposed to stand up, up he stood; if he wished for support he sat down. But as far as Dora had seen, he seldom wished for support; those rather long slim limbs and boyish figure appeared remarkably capable of supporting themselves. He moved quickly and with a certain neatness that was attractive; once—these tiny details were important in making up her impression of him—she had seen him strike a match in a windy place to light his cigarette; one quick stroke had kindled it and his thin brown fingers made a cavern for it, in which it burned unwaveringly as in a room. And he could dance, really dance, not slide about in a crowded ballroom with an avoidance of collision which was really magical, and without—doubtless these things were all of the surface, but they caused the whole image to sink down with her into those depths—without having to mop his face when they stopped, which in general was not before the music stopped.

Suddenly, from the combined quietness of the noises outside, a sound detached itself and made itself very clear to her ear. It was a motor just preparing to start somewhere close below her in the street, and Dora, feeling instinctively, somehow, that this was significant to her, got up and leaned out of the window. Her instinct was correct enough; a big, short, broad man with an extremely shiny top-hat was just stepping into the big Napier car that stood at her mother’s door. Even as she looked out the chauffeur nipped into his place again, and in answer to the footman’s inquiry she heard Mr. Osborne say “‘Ome” quite distinctly. Then he lifted his shiny hat and carefully wiped the top of his bald head. Upon which Dora had, no doubt in reaction from her really serious half hour of thought, a slight fit of the giggles.

But the giggles soon stopped; they were but of the nature of coming to the surface to breathe, and she was already beginning to sink back toward the depths again, when there came a tap at her door, and her mother entered.

Lady Austell was very tall, and one felt at once that there was not the slightest doubt that she was not a countess; it seemed somehow far too suitable a thing to have really occurred. But in the endless surprises of this world, in which everything unconjecturable happens, and everyone is what he should not be, the ideally fit thing had occurred, and a countess she was in spite of the obviousness of the fact that she must be. That she was dowager was no less easy a guess, for though eighteen years had elapsed since her husband’s death, there was something about her dress, a little strip of crape insertion in the violet of her gown, it may be, or the absence of any jewels except an amethyst cross, or at other times a cap very Dutch and becoming with a ribbon of black in it that sat loosely on her abundant hair, that suggested, though it did not notify, widowhood. These insignia, it must be noted, she did not wear simultaneously, but there was never a day on which one at least of them, or others like them, was not present. No doubt also her manner gave confirmation to the impression conveyed by her dress, for it was one from which all exuberance had departed, though it suggested and reminded you (like a clear sunset) that a brilliant day had preceded it. Her voice also was rather faint and regretful, the voice of a widow with an unsatisfactory son and an unmarried daughter. But those who knew her best had in their minds the very distinct knowledge that it was difficult if not impossible to silence that faint voice, or make it say anything different to what it had already said. Lady Austell, when her views were in conflict with those of others, never said very much, but she never changed her tune, nor indeed ceased faintly chanting it, until the opposition had been borne down by her quiet persistence. As for the regretfulness of which her gentle accents were full, it may have been composed of grief for the fact that others, not she, would eventually be obliged to yield.

It will be seen, therefore, that Theresa Austell was an instance the more of the undoubted fact that people as well as things are not what they seem. She seemed, until you knew her quite well, to live uncomplainingly but regretfully among the memories of dead and happier years, whereas, when your acquaintance with her ripened, you would find that she lived with remarkable keenness in the present, and kept a wide and unwavering eye on a live and happier future. She appeared to be soft, gentle and helpless; in reality she was remarkably capable of taking care of herself, and though like ivy she appeared to cling to others for support, her nature was in truth that of the famous ivy that grew on the new mansion in Park Lane; it could stand upright with perfect ease, and was of metallic hardness. Adversity—for she had not had a very happy life—instead of breaking her, had tempered her to an exceeding toughness; what had been at the most soft iron was now reliable steel.

She gave a faint wan smile at Dora as she entered.

“I thought you would be here, dear,” she said. “Your Aunt Adeline has telephoned to know if we want her motor. We can have it till dinner-time and it will then take us to her house. I knew you liked a drive, so I thanked her and said ‘yes.’”

This was merely another way of putting the fact that Lady Austell wanted a drive and also wanted to talk to Dora. But her method of putting it sounded better, and was very likely quite true. Dora did like a drive and since her mother knew it, that might possibly have been the reason why she accepted Aunt Adeline’s offer. But Lady Austell’s next reason (though she had already given reason sufficient) was not so probable. “A drive will do you good, dear,” she said faintly. “You look a little fagged out and pale.”

Dora had learned not to dispute points with her mother. Though in general she was so full of discursive volubility, she was always rather silent with Lady Austell, of whom, in some way that she scarcely understood herself, she was considerably afraid. But that again was typical of the effect her mother produced on people; those who knew her but slightly thought she was the least formidable of women, but the better she was known the more she was feared. Often Dora argued to herself about the matter; she knew that she was not afraid of anything tangible her mother could do to her; she could not beat her or starve her, or ill-treat her, and it must have been her mother’s nature of which she was afraid. The feeling was analogous to a child’s fear of the dark; it fears not what it knows of, but the unknown possibilities that may lurk therein. It cannot say what they are; if it knew it would probably cease to fear them.

Dora got up at once.

“Yes, I should like a drive,” she said.

“Then put on your hat, dear.” And Lady Austell’s pale melancholy eyes fell on the half-trimmed straw.

“Another hat, Dora?” she asked. “I should have thought what you had would have lasted you till the end of the season!”

And at the words Dora’s pleasure in her new hat fell as dead as Sisera at Jael’s feet. Nobody could kill pleasure (though quite innocently) with so unerring an aim as Lady Austell.

“It didn’t cost twopence,” said Dora. “Jim sent me up the feathers from Grote.”

Lady Austell looked at the straw with an experienced eye.

“It is very cheap for less than twopence,” she remarked. “The only question is whether it was necessary. Then you will join me down below, dear? I have a note to write, and we may as well leave it instead of posting it.”

This was illustrative of the cause that had made Dora say that when women grew up they were very odd people. Lady Austell would unfalteringly drive through miles of odious roads to deliver a note rather than post it, but would on the same day drive to Oxford Street (a two-shilling fare in a hansom) in order to purchase what she would have paid sixpence more for round the corner. She was the victim of the habit of petty economy, in pursuit of which passion—one of the most fatal—she would become a perfect spendthrift, casting florins and half crowns right and left in order to save pennies. She took great care of the pence and the half-crowns presumably took care of themselves, for at any rate she took no care of them. But when other people’s expenditure was concerned, she took care of it all.

The note that had to be left (which concerned cessation of subscription from a library in Leicester Square) caused them to traverse the length of Piccadilly, and to retrace it, before they could leave the jostling traffic and turn into the Park, and it so happened that in this traverse of the streets, the month being mid-July, and the hour the late afternoon, Lady Austell had been almost incessantly occupied (though by her own word, she disliked all conventionality) in smiling sadly and regretfully as was her manner, at all the people she knew, and bowing (without a smile) to those who appeared to know her. Somehow, her smile, even when it was most gracious and welcoming, always suggested to the person on whom it was bestowed that something had gone wrong with his affairs, and Lady Austell knew and was most sympathetic, so that Mrs. Osborne (seated in a landau that bobbed prodigiously, owing to the extreme resilience of the springs that came from her husband’s workshops) receiving one of these felt certain for a moment that Mr. O.’s mission that afternoon had not prospered until she remembered that she had seen Lady Austell smile like that before. Soon after, walking gaily eastward, came Austell, whom she had thought to be still in the country, and on whom she bestowed a glance of pained wonder, closely followed by Claude, looking in spite of the heat of the day extremely cool and comfortable in a straw-hatted suit. Dora did not see him; she was at the moment smiling violently at some one who did not see her. Then the motor checked for a moment at the gates of the Park, slid forward again into the less populous ways, and Lady Austell, abandoning the duties of recognition, did her duty by her daughter. As usual she began a little way off the point so that she could get well into her stride, so to speak, before you saw that she was going anywhere in particular. This was a settled policy with her; it insured, in racing parlance, a flying start instead of a start from rest. During the drive down Piccadilly she had been arranging her thoughts with her usual precision; she knew not only what she was going to say, but how she was going to say it.

She gave a little sigh.

“What sermons there are not only in stones,” she said, “but in streets. And, do you know, dear, when one drives down Piccadilly like that and sees all sorts and conditions of men and women jostling each other, what strikes me is not how different people are, but how alike they are. All the differences (she was getting into her stride now) which we think of as so great are really so infinitesimal. Real differences, the things that matter, do not lie on the surface at all. I think our tendency is to make far too much out of mere superficialities and to neglect or discount those traits and qualities which constitute the essential differences between one man and another. Don’t you think so, dear?”

The ingenious Latin language has certain particles used in asking questions, one of which, the grammarian tells us, is used if a negative reply is expected, another if the reply is expected to be affirmative. Lady Austell, speaking in the less rich language of our day, could not make use of these, but there was something in her intonation quite as effective as “nonne.” Dora, without question, found herself saying “yes.”

“I am so glad you agree with me, dear,” went on her mother, “and I am sure you will agree with me also in the fact that, this being so, we should try to judge people, or rather to appreciate them, by the true and inner standard, not by the more obvious but less essential characteristics that we see on the surface.”

Lady Austell’s voice sank a little.

“If one may say so without irreverence,” she said, “how God must laugh at our divisions of classes. We must look like children arranging books by the colour of their covers instead of by their contents. We class all sorts of noble and ignoble people together and call them gentlemen, neglecting the only true classification altogether.”

It was evident now to Dora that her mother had got an excellent start, and she could see what she had started for. There was no need for reply, and Lady Austell having favoured a passing friend with a smile that was positively wintry in its sadness, proceeded.

“Such a good instance of what I am saying occurred to-day, dear,” she said. “Mr. Osborne called on me at six, as I think I told you he was going to do, and for the first time perhaps I fully saw what true delicacy and feeling he has, and how immensely these outweigh any of those things which we hastily might call faults of manner or breeding. It is the same with her, kind excellent woman that she is. What a priceless thing to inherit all that kindness and sweetness of nature.”

Lady Austell was flying along now; the race, so to speak, was clearly a sprint. Dora merely waited for her to breast the tape. She proceeded to do so.

“He came on a subject that very closely concerns you, dear,” she said, “and like a true gentleman he asked my permission before allowing any step to be taken. Can you guess, dear?”

Dora, as has been said, stood considerably in awe of her mother, but occasionally a discourse of this kind, which she felt to be entirely insincere, roused in her an impulse of the liveliest impatience, which gave sharpness to her tongue.

“Oh, dear, yes,” she said. “The truly delicate Mr. Osborne asked if Mr. Claude might pay his addresses to me. I expect he used just those words. I hope you allowed him to, mother.”

Lady Austell’s manner was always admirable. She appeared not to notice the sharpness of the speech at all. She laid her neatly gloved hand on Dora’s.

“Ah, my dearest,” she said.

She looked at her with her sad blue eyes, eyes that always looked tender and patient, even when she was disputing a fare with a cabman. “I am sure you will be very happy dear,” she said after a pause. “He is the most excellent young man, everyone speaks well of him. And, my dear, how good-looking. A perfect—I forget the name.”

Dora had a momentary tendency to giggle at the anticlimax of this. But she checked it, and again her impatience rose to the surface.

“Adonis?” she suggested. “But are not good looks one of those superficial things which we rate too high?”

Lady Austell smiled.

“Ah, you mischievous child,” she said. “You make fun of all I say. I will send a note to Mr. Osborne to-night, for I told him I should have to speak to you first. You will make him very happy, Dora, and you will make somebody else happier. Shall we turn?”