Saying this, Miss Verinder had a demure little smile. “So to speak, girls are allowed to govern almost everything—but then they must never omit to govern themselves. Oh, no, Mildred,” and she shook her head. “In that, public opinion is quite unchanged. I mean for people of our class, Mildred. For those above us and below us it may be quite different. I can’t say. But you’re not a barmaid or a duchess either—are you?”

“No, Miss Verinder,” said Mildred meekly.

“And you have to think of your Alwyn and the effect it might produce on him. There is the danger that he might fail you in a way you haven’t considered. No, no—I don’t for a moment mean play you false. Oh, no. But, perhaps, it is only the very finest natures that can—accept—ah—this particular kind of surrender or self-sacrifice from a woman and still hold her quite as high in their minds as they did before—ah—the surrender occurred.

“There, Mildred dear. I am going to help you for all I am worth, and you are going to be wise. And don’t—I beg you—forget this. I have my reasons for all I have said.”

Mildred, nipping through the traffic of the Brompton Road with the composure and agility of up-to-date girls, and then making her way thoughtfully past the Oratory and into Ennismore Gardens, was wondering what were Miss Verinder’s reasons.

CHAPTER II

MISS VERINDER’S reasons were as follows: In the year 1895, when Queen Victoria still reigned upon the throne, when people still talked of the London season and described it as being good or bad, a brilliant season or a dull season, Emmeline Verinder was living very comfortably with her parents in one of the largest houses of Prince’s Gate. Then, unexpectedly and for the first time, she and love bowed, touched hands, and made acquaintance. The thing came upon her like a thunder-clap.

It began on a June evening just before midnight; and Mr. Verinder, her father, thinking afterwards of that summer night, used to feel a kind of warm prickly irritation, as though one of Destiny’s invisible imps was teasing the back of his stout neck with stinging nettles. It might have happened anyhow, but he could not banish the annoying recollection that he himself had assisted in getting it started. When his wife placidly asked whether the effort was worth while, it was he who had decided that, having accepted the invitation, they must certainly go to Mrs. Clutton’s musical party.

And he had said so not truly because he desired to go, but because of vague, almost organic sensations which told him that if you are a well-preserved man of sixty who is also a personage of a certain importance, who lives in Prince’s Gate, with plenty of money, horses, carriages, an ample ornate wife, one charming beautifully dressed single daughter, and another daughter, married, but now staying on a visit under your roof—when you find yourself so situated and so surrounded, there is something inadequate and unimpressive if you go to bed at eleven o’clock in the height of the London season.

They went, then, the four of them; he, Mrs. Verinder, Emmeline, and Margaret Pratt, her married sister—down the newly-named Exhibition Road, round the corner to one of the largest houses in the Cromwell Road. There would have been space in the closed landau for Eustace, the son and brother; he could have sat between Emmeline and Margaret; but he was attending a banquet as the guest of a city company.

There had been a dinner-party at Mrs. Clutton’s and the Verinders with many others were asked for the music. The concluding strains of Tosti’s Good-Bye floated down the staircase to meet them as they entered the inner hall, through which Mr. Verinder’s ladies swept onward to some library or boudoir at the back of the building, now organised as a place for depositing velvet coats and feathered wraps. Mr. Verinder, having been relieved of his coat and opera hat, stood waiting for them—large, grey-headed, dignified, and yet urbane, exchanging suave civilities with other prosperous ladies and gentlemen, who had arrived just before him. It was a typical evening party of the period—awning, drugget, and linkmen outside; inside, a full pressure on the electric light; large palms, together with masses of flowers brought in for the occasion; extraneous help also in the dining-room, now set as a brilliant supper scene; the servants of the house obliterated, or, at least, standing back behind the numerous grave hirelings in white waistcoats, who, but for their solemnity, might so easily have been mistaken for some of Mrs. Clutton’s visitors.

It should be noted that at this period the neighbourhood still had a distinct society of its own; not, of course, because the antiquated country custom of calling on one another merely as neighbours was practised by its residents, but because this modern spacious end of the town, with no traditions earlier than the Prince Consort, seemed to have been planned and constructed for a particular class of which the members were likely to foregather—fairly rich prosperous people, eminently respectable if somewhat colourless people; merchants, bankers, judges of the High Court, Queen’s counsel of the Parliamentary bar, heads of departments in the civil service; here and there a doctor who had been made a baronet, a successful recently knighted architect, a chartered accountant doing government work, and so on. These and their families meddled not at all, in the year 1895, with fashion and aristocracy; punctual in the regulation attendance at drawing-rooms and levées, but bringing no influence to bear in order to secure command for state concerts and balls; prompt with bouquet or curtsey when a princess opened one of their bazaars, but never fawning on the lady-in-waiting with hints that it would be a pleasure as well as an honour if her Royal Highness would come to luncheon one day, at number so-and-so Prince’s Gardens; they felt and were sufficient for themselves. Untempted by the lure of a vanishing Bohemia, they did not traffic either with artistic circles; they bought pictures and read books without desiring to know the creators of such amenities; they enjoyed the play, but thought a row of footlights a very sensible, useful barrier between comedians of both sexes and the rest of the world.

Thus Mr. Verinder found himself immediately among his friends, and soon learned of something a little unusual about to-night’s assembly. Anthony Dyke, the famous explorer, was here. He had dined here, and was now upstairs listening to the music.

“Oh, that fellow,” said Mr. Verinder. “What a fuss they’re making about him. You see his name everywhere. By the way, I rather thought he was booked to dine with the Salmon-Curers’ Company this evening. My son went there, quite expecting to have a peep at him.”

But old Sir Timothy Smith, given a knighthood last Christmas for designing the market-hall of a northern city, assured Mr. Verinder that the great man had dined with Mrs. Clutton and no one else.

“Refresh my memory about him,” said Mr. Verinder. “I remember the Antarctic voyages. But what’s his latest?”

“Well, nothing since that astounding performance in the Andes.”

“Some of that has been questioned, hasn’t it? Travellers’ tales, what!” said Mr. Verinder, with a large tolerant smile. “Ah, there you are, my dear.”

Mrs. Verinder, sailing forth splendidly from the cloak-room, was at his elbow.

“Dyke, the explorer, is here,” she said.

“Yes, so Sir Timothy was telling me. Lead on, my dear.”

And Mrs. Verinder led on, broad but splendid still in the back-view, carrying her