Love and life

Contents

BOOK PAGE

I. Washington Square, North . i

II. Livingston Place.99

Book I Book I

When Paul Frear, archaeologist, invalid and recluse, died at the early age of forty-seven, it was with the grati¬ fying conviction that he was leaving his only daughter, if not rich, at any rate very well off. Else he never would have appointed his affluent step-sister, Honoria, and her yet more affluent husband, Blazius Bleecker Hetherington, sixth of the name, his executors and Lynneth’s guardians.

But Paul Frcar’s knowledge of the ancient Greeks was excelled only by his ignorance of the modern stockpromoter. The bundles of certificates found in his safe deposit box proved valuable merely as testimo¬ nials to the fecundity of the human imagination. A very small amount of ready money and the old white house among the New England hills, in which he had secluded himself after the motor accident which crippled him and killed his young wife, were the sole negotiable portions of Lynneth’s inheritance.

Which partly explains why a frown slowly deepened on Mrs. Bleecker Hetherington’s usually serene fore¬ head as she listened, one November evening some eight months after Paul Frear’s death, to the concluding sen¬ tences of the letter her husband was reading aloud:

“. . . So you see I shall have to come to New York. There is no work for me here, and I must begin to earn my living at once. Please remember me to Aunt Honoria, and believe me,

“Sincerely and gratefully yours, Lynneth Frear. ,,

Carefully folding the letter Mr. Hetherington replaced it in his lizard-skin pocket-book, took off his gold-rimmed eye-glasses, and demanded with much deliberation and no small amount of acidity; “Well, Honoria! What do you think about that?”

But Blazius Bleecker Hetherington’s second wife—he had been a widower with an only child when he married Honoria van Sturtevant—though by no means a clever woman, was an extremely prudent one. She was not yet ready to commit herself; she temporized.

“It’s evident the girl has made up her mind,” she responded slowly.

“Quite so; quite so. It’s putting me in a very awk¬ ward position, very awkward indeed! What will people say if I allow a twenty-year-old girl, my wife’s niece— oh yes; I know she isn’t actually your niece, but that’s what everybody will call her—to go traipsing around the city looking for a job?” Mr. Hetherington spoke as one whose just grievance no rational person could deny.

“It wouldn’t be particularly pleasant for me, either,” asserted Mrs. Hetherington ruminatively. Absence of imagination makes difficult the weighing even of precise and manifest evils.

They had dined alone that evening, and were now having coffee in the library of the big, old-fashioned house on the north side of Washington Square, built in a characteristically solid and prosaic manner by Blazius Bleecker Hetherington, Third. Much of the substantial rosewood furniture had belonged to the yet older family residence on Bowling Green, and from the white pannelled walls the portraits of by-gone Bleeckers and Hetheringtons — Roman-nosed, stiffly starched matrons and high-collared patriarchs—gazed with austere approbation upon the couple they had watched pass from a calm and prosperous youth into an even more calm and prosperous middle-age. Through the tall windows, heavily curtained and valanced with the massive brocades which had al¬ ready survived at least two generations, the noises of the outer world came muffled and sullen.

“What does the child fancy she can do?” Mrs. Hetherington’s habitual placidity had been partly restored during the pause which enabled her to reach a decision. But she was still tapping her black velvet covered lap with the platinum lorgnon hanging from her neck on a diamond-studded chain—an unfailing symptom of mental disturbance, as her husband very well knew.

“It appears she acted as her father’s secretary, and has an idea of doing something of the sort in an office. I thought she’d stay on with those nice old ladies. They were willing to keep her, and I wouldn’t have objected to paying her board. It would have been so much more suitable! and she likes living in the country.”

This was not a deliberate falsehood; merely a suppo¬ sition based on knowledge of what would contribute most to his own well-being.

Another moment’s reflection: then Mrs. Hetherington suggested mildly: “Why not have her come to us ?”

“My dear Honoria! The fact that your father, a widower, married her father’s mother, a widow, doesn’t make her a member of Our Family!”

“There isn’t any blood relationship, of course. But Paul and I were brought up like brother and sister.” Mrs. Hetherington’s mildness was as the mildness of milk.

“Quite so; quite so. But after he quarrelled with your father you were estranged for years. You never even heard from him until after he was dead!”

Mr. Hetherington referred, not to any spiritualistic communication from the defunct Paul, but to that clause in his will which appointed his step-sister and her hus¬ band joint guardians of Lynneth.

Mrs. Hetherington’s placidity was not equal to the task of perfectly concealing her embarrassment, the embar¬ rassment of one who ordinarily avoided emotions as sedulously as she did contagious diseases. The tapping of the lorgnon was quicker than her words, her voice uncertain, and very low: “I’m not sure I was right about all that. I’ve often thought I ought perhaps to have done something when Paul’s wife died. Written to him, or —or something. And at the last he did think of me.”

Mr. Blazius Bleecker Hetherington—in his college days ironically nick-named “Blazing Bleeck”—suppressed an undignified desire to snort. But he had never yet failed in politeness to this second wife of his, and would not now.

“Quite so, my dear, quite so,” he said hurriedly, vaguely wondering whether he ought not to pat her hand. They were an undemonstrative couple, and her barely articulate implications of regret and scruple were dis¬ concerting to them both. But then there was in this matter of Paul Frear’s daughter so much that was dis¬ concerting and unpleasant! They were accustomed to a successful evading of the unpleasant.

“I think Lynneth had better come to us, at least for a while,” Mrs. Hetherington went on more confidently. “I’ll need some one to help me with the lists and things for Lisa’s wedding, and she can take Esther Lamont’s place as bridesmaid. No one need know she hasn’t been in mourning for a year or two. She’s never been any¬ where, or had any good times. I’d like to give her a chance.”

A chance to marry, understood. The business of earning a living was no doubt entirely proper, admirable even, for ordinary young women—was not Mrs. Hetherington chairman of the Board of Lady Managers of a Working Girls’ Home?—but other standards must be applied to one who was, no matter how remotely, related to Mrs. Blazius Bleecker Hetherington, born Honoria van Sturtevant.

Mr. Hetherington made a very slight gesture with the plump and well-tended hand in which he held a plump and particularly choice cigar. His starched shirt-front creaked as he sighed inaudibly; “You never can tell what a girl will take it into her head to do, my dear. Look at Lisa!”

Mr. Hetherington’s elder daughter, the only child of his long dead, almost forgotten first wife, was soon to be married to a young man possessed of good looks, expensive tastes, little money, and no occupation.

“That’s different!” There was a subcurrent of un¬ conscious triumph in Mrs. Hetherington’s tone; she in¬ stinctively seized the opportunity to score off her prede¬ cessor. “If Lisa’s mother hadn’t left her so much money—! Lynneth hasn’t anything. Besides, Phil Armytage is really rather charming. His great-grand¬ mother was a Ravenel of Virginia, and he’s devoted to Lisa!”

Mr. Hetherington did not respond. He was usually ready to bestow the cachet of his gracious approbation upon that Providence which had demonstrated its wisdom by giving him an ample fortune, an aristocratic old name, a handsome wife and one rarely beautiful daughter, Val¬ erie, child of this second wife. Yet there were times when its bounties fell provokingly short of his just ex¬ pectations—as they had certainly done in this affair of Lisa’s engagement. Now an idea entered his mind and he spoke slowly, contemplating the tip of his cigar, and avoiding his wife’s eyes:

“Well, my dear, if you need some one to help you, I see no reason why Lynneth shouldn’t prove useful. You might write and make her the oiler. She’s very proud, and I’m sure she’ll be much happier if she’s doing a little something for you, in return for all you’ll be doing for her.”

He paused, seeming to give his entire attention to the neat bestowal of his cigar ash in the small bronze bowl waiting to receive it. Outwardly he presented the serene aspect of a portly, middle-aged gentleman whose exist¬ ence had so far been as generally satisfactory as the ex¬ cellent dinner he had recently consumed. Yet he felt ashamed.

His apparently peaceful life was the battleground of two passions; a desire to stand well in the eyes of his fellows, and a longing to save money. His vanity and his affection for his second wife had nearly always been able to defeat his constitutional stinginess; but the mo¬ ments when some petty economy made it possible for him to avoid the spending of a few pennies were happy ones to Blazius Bleecker Hetherington, Sixth. His wife never dreamed that he agonized over the bills he paid in Spartan silence, nor suspected that the reason his reg¬ ular lunch consisted of a glass of buttermilk was not exclusively hygienic.

Honoria Hetherington, to whom having money to spend and air to breathe were about equally matters of course, took her husband’s remark at its face value.

“What a wonderfully considerate and understanding person you are, Bleecker! After Lynneth’s been in New York a little while she’ll get over all these childish ideas of hers about being independent and earning her own living, and realize that that sort of thing simply won’t do.”

“Quite so; quite so,” Mr. Hetherington answered a little hastily. “But what will Valerie say?”

The beauty of this younger daughter, sole offspring of his second matrimonial venture, often seemed to him conclusive proof that Providence fully understood what was righteously due to a Bleecker Hetherington.

His wife’s slightly prominent, china-blue eyes met his complacently.

“Valerie?” she repeated. “Oh, Valerie won’t mind! It will be nice for her to have a companion. She wouldn’t admit it for the world—you know how she is!—but I’m sure she’ll miss Lisa sadly.”

Mr. Hetherington made no answer. They had been married nearly a quarter of a century, but there were still times when he, though not a particularly discerning person, was almost dumbfounded by his wife’s extraor¬ dinary talent for remaining completely and honestly blind to whatever it would, or might, be disagreeable for her to perceive. That sisters, even half-sisters, invariably loved each other was a part of the code of conventions she accepted without question. She would not have worn a ready-made glove; but ready-made opinions save so much trouble!

“Lynneth had better come to us next week,” she flowed on blandly. “That will give me time to get her a few things before the rush begins; I don’t suppose she has anything fit to wear. Then during December I’ll have a luncheon or two, and introduce her formally—unless Valerie’d prefer a tea dance.”

Mr. Hetherington winced. A usually considerate destiny had certainly played him the shabbiest of tricks in permitting Paul Frear to die and leave an all but penniless young daughter, of whom it was necessary— and so obtrusively necessary!—that some one should take care. If only this inconvenient and probably expensive Lynneth had some half suitable place to go to—or any place at all, for that matter, except No. — Washington Square, North!

Slipping hastily out of bed, Lynneth pattered across the floor on little bare feet and drew up the dark blind which shaded the tall, old-fashioned window. Her first morning in New York, her first daylight glimpse of the Enchanted City—! She thrilled at the thought.

A perfectly unexciting prospect of staid backyards wherein a marauding grey cat was the sole adventurer somewhat chilled her enthusiasm, and she returned to her small warm hollow beneath the blankets, piling up the pillows behind her so that she might more easily look about the pretty room, with its creamy walls and daffodil-flowered chintzes, which for a little while was all her very own.

But only for a little while, she sternly reminded her¬ self. She wasn’t going to be dependent on any one! Though there was no reason why she shouldn’t spend a month or so with this kindly Aunt Honoria of hers, here in Washington Square, especially when Aunt Honoria needed her help with the arrangements for Lisa’s wed¬ ding. She sighed involuntarily. Somehow, excursions into the business world seemed less alluring now, than when viewed from the isolated little village among the bleak New England hills. The opulent luxury of this aristocratic old house, so stately and quiet and peace¬ ful—

Peaceful ?

She snuggled her slim little shoulders further down into the lavender-scented pillows, as if trying to retreat from the memory which pestered her like an insistent mosquito. She wouldn’t pay a scrap of attention to it. Ten chances to one it was only fancy, anyway. Her

II imagination, excited by novelty, had been playing pranks.

And how new to her it all was, from the drive down glistening, rain-swept Fifth Avenue in the Rolls-Royce limousine to this awakening between monogram-em¬ broidered linen sheets! As far back as she could re¬ member she had lived in the barren and forbidding house to which her father retreated when his injured spine rendered him incapable of continuing those explo¬ rations among Egyptian ruins which were the centre of all his ambitions. The commentaries on Aeschylus which brought praise from scholars all over the world seemed to him a poor substitute for his chosen work—almost as poor a substitute as the daughter he tolerated was for the wife he had devotedly loved, and to whose memory he was completely faithful.

Lynneth’s only other associates had been the Misses Quincy, a pair of ex-schoolmistresses to whose unsophis¬ ticated minds New York was a veritable sink of iniquity, compared with which Sodom was chaste and Gomorrah absolutely Puritanical. They had done their conscien¬ tious best to instil this belief into Lynneth, thereby rous¬ ing her curiosity and making her feel that in going to Washington Square she was beginning a wonderful ad¬ venture, deliciously spiced with all sorts of mysterious dangers.

Memory of her one short interview with Mrs. Hetherington did not, it is true, recall anything noticeably exciting about that serene and substantial matron; but Lynneth’s was a hopeful nature. She had only the most nebulous idea of what she might expect to find in New York, but it was something romantic and glamorous and enthralling, something quite, quite different from the deadly dull routine which was all she had ever known. Terrible, perhaps; but certainly neither monotonous nor sordid, and if evil, then of a splendid sulphurous wicked¬ ness appropriate to defiant Lucifer, once Son of the Morning.

n

She pushed the dense shadowy masses of soft dark hair back from her low forehead and the small pale face which often seemed to be all big grey eyes, eyes eager with the grave and earnest eagerness of an enquir¬ ing child, full of the unconscious pathos of youth robbed of its playtime. Her arrival the night before, the five people she had met at the dinner she was too excited to eat—she tried to sort out her impressions of these with the impatient haste of an intuitive, impetuous mind drilled to methodical habits. She did not realize how artificial these habits were, nor that her craving for change and excitement was but a very simple hunger for the love and joy her youth had so far been denied. She had been constrained to plod when her instinct was to dance.

A tap on the door and her automatic “Come in !” were immediately followed by the entrance of Parkins, the severely competent maid who immediately after her ar¬ rival had taken autocratic possession of her keys, unpack¬ ing her meagre belongings and stowing them away with intimidating swiftness and precision.

“Miss Valerie told me to see if you was awake, Miss. An’ to ask if you’d have breakfast with her in the sittin’ room in fifteen minutes/’

In an entirely respectful manner, the maid managed to convey the impression that a request from Miss Val¬ erie was a royal command. Also that she, Parkins, re¬ garded the newcomer as an intruder and a worm.

“Please tell her I’ll be there,” replied Lynneth with dignity.

“Very good, Miss. I’ll close the windows and draw your bath first, Miss.”

Here was luxury for you! No getting up in a cold room and shivering through the length of an unheated hall to the bathroom, faintly hoping the water might be at least lukewarm—which it never was! Through the now open door she could see the snowy porcelain tub with the shower above it, the glittering silver racks hold¬ ing sponge and delicately-scented French soap and huge soft fuzzy Turkish towels. Her outing-flannel kimono, thickened and faded with many washings, and the shape¬ less slippers Miss Hannah Quincy had crocheted for her last Christmas looked startlingly out of place in these surroundings. But they seemed still more out of place when, fresh and fragrant from the bath into which she had breathlessly ventured to put some of the fascinat¬ ingly tinted bath-salts she had found ready in a big glass jar, and with her dark hair hanging in two thick braids, she entered the little sitting room she had been told she was to share with Valerie. She would have liked to put on her dress and do up her hair, but the fifteen minutes were over, and she had been taught that to be late was to be ill-bred.

The room was empty. A wood fire crackled blithely on the hearth, and before it stood a small table, laid for two. On the mantelshelf a French gilt clock ticked en¬ ergetically.

Its mercury-weighted pendulum swung back and forth, back and forth. No Valerie. Back and forth, back and forth. Still no Valerie. Five, ten, fifteen minutes passed. . . .

Lynneth was wondering whether she could have mis¬ taken the room when a door opened. And then she caught her breath, just as she had caught her breath the previous evening, when for the first time she saw that dazzling, white-and-gold vision which was Valerie van Sturtevant Hetherington.

Her admiration was undisguised, and Valerie smiled, well pleased. This dainty little cousin was evidently ready to think her perfect, and it is always agreeable and frequently useful to be thought perfect. Appreciatively conscious of her own unrivalled loveliness, she sauntered across the room, and putting one rosy-tipped finger under

Lynneth’s chin turned up the wistfully eager little face and lightly kissed the parted lips.

“I foresee,” she declared playfully, “I foresee we’re going to be great friends, you and I!”

She made no apology for her tardiness, nor did it occur to Lynneth to expect one.

“Oh, I do hope we are!” she exclaimed eagerly, flush¬ ing a little in her earnestness.

She looked at Valerie with admiring eyes. Lavishly over-paying a bit of kindness whose cost she never thought of reckoning, she was ready to do anything that might please the wonderful being who bestowed it. She had known only the tepid affection of the Misses Quincy, and her father’s impatient acceptance of her as, on the whole, a convenience. And while it may be quite pos¬ sible to do good to those who persecute you, it is, to say the least, extremely difficult to love those who tolerate you.

Valerie smiled charmingly. “I was sure of it last night, the minute I came into the room!” Slipping a smooth round arm about Lynneth’s shoulders, she turned to the maid. “Everything ready, Parkins? Very well; that’s all now. I’ll ring when I want you. We’ll have a nice cosy time, just by ourselves,” she added as the maid left the room, and without waiting for a reply, went on; “I knew you were a perfect dear, as soon as I looked at you. Honestly now, what did you think of me?”

“I thought you were the most beautiful thing-”

Lynneth broke off abruptly, blushing at her own im¬ petuous frankness.

Valerie smiled again. No doubting the sincerity of that exclamation! Yet she asked with calculated curi¬ osity ; “And what else? You saw and thought something else, I’m sure. What was it?”

Lynneth hesitated, a touch of dismay shadowing her expressive face. Valerie, slowly sipping orange-juice strained and chilled to precisely the right temperature.

watched her with guileless-seeming, madonna-blue eyes, and saw the shadow deepen.

For Lynneth knew what Valerie meant, and she hadn’t expected anything like this—a crisis in its own small way. Her almost cloistered life had denied her the social training which makes dexterous avoidance of such minor crises nearly instinctive. Yet how admit what she had, not so much thought as felt at that instant when, already seated at the oblong table in the great dining room, fac¬ ing Lisa and Lisa’s fiance, Philip Armytage, she had witnessed Valerie’s belated entrance and then, turning suddenly, caught the look in the elder sister’s eyes ?

It was the memory of that glance which had made her hesitate to call the fine old house “peaceful.”

Had the only partly understood impression, an im¬ pression registered more on her nerves than on her brain, been a little less profound, she would quickly have dis¬ covered some euphuism to cover her thoughts. But the look in Lisa’s eyes had been as startling as the abrupt unveiling of something malignant and festering, some¬ thing whose very existence was a threat.

“What else could I have been thinking?” she replied; and knew that her brief pause had betrayed her.

Valerie put aside her empty glass. She too paused a moment. Her blue eyes had a Greuze-like innocence; “I wasn’t sure you’d seen—or would understand if you did see.”

“Whether I’d seen? And understood?” Lynneth’s question was very nearly a demand. To her impatient young frankness this dialogue of indirect reply and veiled suggestion was both alien and irksome. She wanted Valerie either to leave the matter alone, or to put into words what she still faintly hoped she had misunder¬ stood.

Valerie’s glance was half-appraising, half-amused. She turned the tiny ivory spigot of the Queen Anne coffee urn, and as the clear brown stream flowed smoothly into the old Chinese porcelain cups, replied with a casualness which seemed to deny her words; “The sad and simple fact that Lisa hates me/'

For the moment she left it there. “One lump, or two?” she asked pleasantly.

“Two, please.”

“You’re not shocked at my admitting it, are you? You’d be sure to find out before long, living in the house. She really does hate me, you know; and after all, why shouldn’t she? I’ve always put her in the shade, ever since we were little mites of children. Of course, it's not my fault. I can’t help it if I’m—well, rather better-looking than she is! But I don’t blame her one scrap, and I’d be friends with her if she’d let me. After all, if I’m prettier, she’s got a big income of her own, and I haven’t a penny. Her mother left her lots of money.”

“Her mother?” the surprised Lynneth repeated.

“Why, yes. Didn’t you know my father married twice? Lisa’s mother died when she was born, and a year or so later he married my mother. I’m only about two years younger than Lisa. Of course,” she added smilingly, “if father hadn’t married again, Lisa’d have been mistress of his house, and inherited all he’s got, and I wouldn’t have been here to interfere with her. Honestly, I don’t wonder she hates me! I guess I’d feel as she does if I were in her place, though I’d never do what she’s going to. Don’t you think it’s awfully fool¬ ish?”

“Think what’s foolish?”

“For her to marry Phil Armytage.”

“I don’t know anything about it. Why do you call it foolish?” Lynneth’s reply was instinctively defensive.

But it was not so much Lisa as her own dreams of romance that she defended. A betrothal was to her the key to an enchanted garden. . . .

Valerie’s deprecating gesture was grace itself. “Oh, my dear!” she exclaimed. “You don’t mean to say— honestly, haven’t you noticed? He’s not one bit in love with her.”

“Then why-?”

“The usual reason! He hasn’t a cent, and Lisa’s a great catch. That’s why.”

“How perfectly disgusting!” flashed Lynneth indig¬ nantly.

Again Valerie smiled. “Oh, well—! It’s give and take. Lots of people marry without caring much about each other, and get along all right. If Phil wasn’t— wasn’t Phil, it might be safe enough. Don’t you think he’s awfully good-looking ?”

“Ye-es. In a way. But— Does Lisa know? If she cares-”

“// she cares ! But does she ? I doubt it!—Have an¬ other muffin, won’t you?—You see, he’s a great flirt, and awfully popular. Lots of girls are wild about him, and, of course, it’s always fun to get hold of a man other girls want. Besides, Lisa’s crazy to leave home, and have her own establishment, and do as she likes. Of course, she could quit now, but that would mean a dread¬ ful row with father, and if he got angry enough, he might cut her out of his will. Father and mother are dreadfully old-fashioned and awfully fussy about what we do and where we go, and I don’t know how much all that counts with Lisa. . . . Wonder if I could find out? It might be fun to try!”

Lynneth was too inexperienced to form any precise idea of the methods Valerie might use in such an attempt, but intuition told her that the attempt itself would be a summons to disaster.

“Couldn’t your mother do something ?” she asked, feel¬ ing as if she had been hurried into a drama’s second act without having learned anything about her part, and a good deal excited by the hint of coming complications.

“Mother? Why, she’s convinced that Lisa and I are devoted sisters, and Phil an adoring lover! She’d be perfectly miserable if she suspected a quarter of what I’ve told you. That’s one reason why I did tell you— so you shouldn’t say anything to upset her,” concluded Valerie, pleased by this idea of an affectionate consider¬ ation for her mother’s feelings which had just occurred to her. That other self which is in all of us, the self that sits apart, was applauding her conduct of this seem¬ ingly unimportant interview.

Lynneth nodded gravely. Nearly twenty years of al¬ most steady repression had made her a rather silent person.

Valerie rose and stood a moment, idly playing a tattoo on the back of her chair with a pair of slender, shapely hands. Her flawless, milk-and-roses complexion and hair which had the softness and colour of ripe corn-silk could brave the sunlight now flooding the room. A more ex¬ perienced observer might have seen defects in that al¬ luring face, might have thought the rosy mouth selfindulgent, the blue eyes hard beneath their apparent soft¬ ness; but to Lynneth it was perfect. Beautiful, charm¬ ing, lovely and lovable, Valerie seemed to her all that she herself would have liked to be.

And this adorable princess talked of being “great friends” with her!

“I was sure you’d understand,” Valerie said, slowly and not too definitely. “You see, Lynnie dear, no one can be both my friend, and Lisa’s. It’s a pity, but—oh well, there it is! And I want you for mine.”

Lynneth’s grey eyes, that looked so dark with their black-pencilled irids and long, thickly curling lashes, were shining now.

“I’m glad,” she said quietly.

She too had risen and stood, a shabby, rather quaint little figure in the old washed-out kimono, her soft wavy hair parted over the broad white forehead where the dark eyebrows made a clear, delicately curved line above the steady eyes. Lashes and brows emphasized the pallour she owed to a youth spent tethered to the desk where she tried to satisfy the exactions of an irritable invalid.

Valerie looked down, smilingly, into the sensitive, up¬ turned face. Suddenly, with a movement really beautiful in its long-limbed grace, she swept the younger girl into her arms, and kissed her lightly. It meant nothing to her, that swift embrace; but it meant a great deal to Lynneth.

“There!” Valerie exclaimed with a little laugh, and glancing at the clock, added; “Now I must dress—I’m going to ride in the Park. Wish you were coming with me! Oh, by the way, mother said to tell you she’d like you to be ready to go out with her at half-past ten. All right, Parkins! I’m coming!”

A breathless scramble enabled Lynneth to be ready at the designated hour. Endowed with the magic knack some few thrice-blessed women possess, she could dress in a whirlwind and look as if she had done it amid per¬ fect calm.

This time she was not kept waiting. Mrs. Hetherington approved her punctuality, and remarked upon it graciously.

“It may be an old-fashioned virtue, my dear, but a lady is always considerate, and I’ve taught my girls never to be late for any engagement, no matter how trivial.” She settled herself in the tan-upholstered limousine, gave the footman an adaress, and went serenely on; “I thought we’d do a little shopping this morning, and get you a few of the things you need most. You must have a tailored suit, and a couple of little frocks, and some hats, and one or two evening gowns at once. Later we can attend to the rest.”