in attaching herself permanently to the “Idol of all the Capitals of Europe,” as the leaflets were wont to declare him after a tour of the watering-places between Margate and Beachy Head; such an erratic existence was not without its charms; but the Idol shook his head at her suggestion:

“I would not have the bloom brushed from your girlhood, my Pepita,” tenderly.

Peter laughed: “The ladies who find your voice so full of tears and your hair so full of wave, would lose some of their enthusiasm if they saw you forever accompanied by a grown-up daughter. Is that it?”

Bertram Kyndersley deprecated; met the said daughter’s eye—and slowly winked his own; an inexcusable loss of moral equilibrium, atoned for by the rich sobriety of his next remark:

“You are a great comfort to me, my little girl. Your poor mother said you would be a comfort to me,” for by this manner of speech did he seek reminder of his surprising parenthood, a factor he was otherwise liable to forget, but to which he fondly clung for the sake of its unanswerable link with respectability. Then he borrowed her quarterly dress allowance, and went with it a-wooing.

So Peter dwelt with her mother’s elder sister at Thatch Lane. That is to say, they had bedrooms in the same house, and took their meals together. But Miss Esther Worthing’s universe consisted of herself, wearing a high linen collar and carrying an umbrella; surrounded by houses containing each a county family—particular county a matter of indifference; surrounded in turn by churches—orthodox, of course; English public schools, mostly Eton; the whole encircled by a high wall, beyond which dwelt foreigners, Jews, artists, and suchlike. Peter being distinctly suchlike, knew herself well beyond the wall, and was quite content to abide there. Occasionally she made concessions to her aunt by allowing herself to be exploited in county circles; county in this case consisting of Thatch Lane. She had exhausted the resources of Thatch Lane practically at the outset; wrung from the place and people all they contained of stimulation; zigzagged like a streak of lightning through the lives of the young men of the neighbourhood, finished them off before they were well aware of being started; remaining still avid for something that could wear out her marvellous brain and superb body; tear from her that bright defiant liberty she claimed as her chief right; someone who could tire her ... tire her? at times she felt more weariness for lack of battle than defeat could ever have brought in its train.

Particular occupation she had none; but took her days unlinked, in something of the true vagabond spirit, each one for what it would bring her. Days that began with dawn and ended with darkness, and naught of connection between darkness and dawn. Neither did she own a knit coterie of friends; but had picked up a random assortment, and darted in and out of their separate spheres of life, as the need or the careless fancy took her. So that there was a certain lack of rhythmic swing, of cohesion, in her twenty-three years, till she met Merle des Essarts.

They flashed together at a charity subscription dance in the Assembly Hall at Thatch Lane. Merle had been motored thither by some acquaintances, forced into an extensive purchase of tickets. Peter was on the committee; and had donned for the evening an appropriate voice and expression. For she took pride in her powers of outward adjustment to whatever part she was called upon to play, while able to regard her motley the while with amused and appreciative detachment.

They happened with their respective partners at the same supper-table.

Merle’s partner cut his thumb.

“I wonder if I ought to bind it up.”

“I shouldn’t like blood-poisoning to set in.”

“It’s not worth making a fuss. I hate making a fuss.”

“I’m not saying much about it, but as a matter of fact, I’m in considerable pain.”

“Look, Miss des Essarts!”

Merle did not want to look, but the thumb of Mark St. Quentin was thrust upon her.

“It is bad, isn’t it?” courteously.

Presently she was invited to look again; and again she took an intelligent interest. It was just sufficiently bad to spoil her entrée.

“I’m not saying much about it——”

“Let me tie it up for you,” quoth Peter suddenly, noting the other girl’s lack of appetite.

Peter produced a dainty square of lawn and lace. Peter bent her boyish halo of hair in deep absorption over the injured member. And both her own partner and the victim supplied all the obvious patter about the “healing touch,” and “it was worth while to have suffered,” and “some people have all the luck,” and (of course) “will you let me keep the handkerchief?”—unutterable meanings in the request.

“‘When pain and anguish wring the brow,’” Merle murmured to her plate, as a very flushed ministering angel raised her head from the act of mercy.

Peter tossed her a look of indignation, and afterwards waylaid her in the corridor:

“See here,” hotly, “I don’t know who you are, but I made an ass of myself so that you should enjoy your sweetbreads, and then you rag me about it!”

“I’m sorry,” Merle replied, very penitent. “And I am grateful to you, really. But you didn’t see his ecstatic expression while you bound up the wound. Please forgive me—and let me replace the handkerchief.”

Peter liked this girl with the curious foreign lilt in her accent, and the demure sense of humour. And when a few days later a half-dozen of finely embroidered handkerchiefs arrived, together with a formal invitation to take tea with the sender, she went with a foreknowledge of having at last discovered someone who could speak her peculiarly twisted language.

She found a French bonbon in an exquisite bonbonnière; she found a jewel in its pink-lined casket; she found a dainty little lady, guarded and cherished as is only a “jeune fille” of French extraction; exquisitely dressed; very much in the picture, whether in the Louis-Seize drawing-room, or the Empire boudoir, or on the front seat of her grandmother’s roomy and old-fashioned barouche. And buried deep beneath these ornamentations, she found more of herself than she ever thought to encounter in a fellow-being. So much of herself, that it was almost a shock to vanity.

They did not become Best Friends in the sense of choosing each other’s hats, and walking with interlaced arms. They walked instead with interlaced lives. And from a series of vivid and incongruous patches, Peter now saw it possible to weave the pattern of her existence and Merle’s, so that the minutes were linked to the hours, and the seasons pursued one another the round of the calendar, and every haphazard personage was given a meaning, and every group of persons. And they planned undertakings and carried them through always; and robbed fiction of adventure, to place that wild-haired lass in the setting of things-that-happen. Journeys did they plot, preceded by an elaborate structure of deception for the benefit of Miss Esther Worthing, and an entirely different édition de luxe to satisfy Madame des Essarts; thus necessitating great play for the exercise of their ingenuity. If one mood led them to revel in utterly childish delights, such as raising the golden-syrup spoon high above the plate, so as to let the shining liquid drop in coils and patterns upon the bread, a swift change of circumstances showed the twain in ultra-luxurious furs and ultra-spotless white kid gloves, setting forth solemnly, and with the moral support of a card-case, to “pay calls.” They arranged imaginary “parties,” one for the other; of which Merle’s