Théo Joyselle?"

"My dear child, he is three years younger than I, even counting in bare years! And in reality I am twenty years too old for him. Silly little boy, don't bother about me." And her face, as she smiled down at her brother, was very pleasant as well as very beautiful.

"But he has money——"

She nodded.

"And——"

"How did you know that, imp?"

"Having eyes to see, I saw. And I'd like to be an In-law to Victor Joyselle. I'd make him play to me all day. I say, I suppose she wouldn't let us run up to hear him to-morrow?"

"Not she."

He sighed, and it was a grown-up sigh issuing from a child's throat, for he loved music and had read the programme.

"How glorious the last one was! Upon my word, if I were you, I'd marry Théo just to be that man's daughter-in-law."

Again she laughed and laid her hand on his head.

"Good old Thomas. He's a Norman peasant, remember—probably eats with his knife. Oh, here's a motor—and it is Théo himself."

"Yes, speak of an angel and you hear his horn."

"Shall I tell him of your plan?" she teased as the motor slowed up.

But Tommy had disappeared, and in his place, small, freckled, and untidy, it is true, but a gentlemanly host welcoming his mother's guest, stood Lord Kingsmead.

CHAPTER TWO

Lady Kingsmead was one of those piteous beings, a middle-aged young woman. She was forty-six, but across a considerably-lighted room looked thirty-six. The shock, when one approached her, was so much the greater. Her plentiful, grey-streaked hair dwelt in disgrace behind a glossy transformation, and her face had, from constant massage and make-up, a curious air of not belonging to her any more than did the wavy hair above it.

The lines that the mercifully deliberate on-coming of age draws on all of us were, it is true, nearly obliterated, but in their place was a certain blankness that 

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