box—well, it was disconcerting, to say the least of it, and Bridget’s dignity was visibly upset. She had forgotten that all the “make ups” which we had used for various Christmas festivals were stored away in that old tin box, and consequently could not guess that I was fired with an ambition to try on Kathie’s disguise forthwith.

Ten minutes later I was standing before the glass and enthusiastically acclaiming the truth of Bridget’s statement, as I stared at the reflection of a spectacled dame with grizzled eyebrows, grey hair banded smoothly over the ears, and a bulging fullness at the base of each cheek! It was the cheeks that made the disguise! Spectacles and hair still left the personality of the face untouched; even the bushy eyebrows were but a partial disguise, but with the insertion of those small india-rubber pads came an utter and radical change. That chubby, square-faced woman was not Evelyn Wastneys. Never by any possibility could she see forty again. So far as propriety went, she might roam alone from one end of the world to the other. If she lived in the largest block of flats that was ever erected, her neighbours would regard her comings and goings with serene indifference. Admirable woman! She did not “take the eye”. I met her spectacled glance with a beam of approval.

“I have it!—I have it! I must dress for the part! In London I’ll be a middle-aged aunt; in Surrey, a niece—my own niece and namesake, who, of her charity, consents to receive some of her auntie’s protégées and give them a good time!” The wildness, the audacity of the project made to me its chief appeal. My life interest had been so sheltered, so hedged round by convention, that at times it had seemed as though there was a wall of division between me and every other human creature. It was so difficult to show oneself in one’s real colours, to see and know other people as they really were. But now!—oh, what a unique and exhilarating experience it would be to taste at the same time the romance of youth and the freedom of age, to witness the different sides of other characters as exhibited in their treatment of aunt and niece.

That one illuminating suggestion of Bridget’s has cleared the way. From the moment of hearing there had been no real hesitation; before night fell my plans were made, and a telegram to Charmion was speeding on its way. A new life lay before me—a dual life, teeming with interest and possibility. On one hand, my fate must be to some extent bound up with that of Charmion Fane, the most interesting and, in a sense, mysterious woman I had ever met; on the other, I was plunging into the unknown, and transforming myself into a new personality, to meet the new circumstances. I stared at myself in the glass and solemnly shook my grey head.

“Evelyn, my dear, be prepared! You are going to have an adventurous time!”