"I'm feeling a little lonely," said the professor, smiling at
Mrs. Carr-Boldt.

"Nothing like that; unsay them woyds," said Maude Allen, cheerfully.
"Mamma, make him dine with us! Say you will."

"I assure you I was dreading the lonely evening," John Tenison said
gratefully. Margaret's last glimpse of his face was between Lily's
pink and cherry hat, and Maude's astonishing headgear of yellow straw,
gold braid, spangled quills, and calla lilies. She carried a secret
heartache through the worried fortnight of Victoria's illness, and the
busy days that followed; for Mrs. Carr-Boldt had one of many nervous
break-downs, and took her turn at the hospital when Victoria came
home. For the first time in five happy years, Margaret drooped, and
for the first time a longing for money and power of her own gnawed at
the girl's heart. If she had but her share of these things, she could
hold her own against a hundred Maude and Lily Allens.

As it was, she told herself a little bitterly, she was only a
secretary, one of the hundred paid dependents of a rich woman. She was
only, after all, a little middle-class country school teacher.



CHAPTER V

"So you're going home to your own people for the week end, Peggy?--And
how many of you are there,--I always forget?" said young Mrs. George
Crawford, negligently. She tipped back in her chair, half shut her
novel, half shut her eyes, and looked critically at her finger-nails.