out to be the other sort, mother, why"—and here I rose and stretched out my arms wide—"let them go, they are not worth keeping. Those who won't be fond of us in our new home in Bloomsbury we can do without."

6

"You are enthusiastic and—and ignorant," said mother.

"I grant that I am enthusiastic," I answered. "It would be a great pity if I had none of that quality at one and twenty; but as to my ignorance, well, time will prove. I should like, however, to ask you a straight question, mother. Would father have sat beside his guns and done nothing when the fight was going against him? Was that the way he won his Victoria Cross?"

Mother burst out crying. She never could bear me to allude to that fatal and yet glorious occasion. She rose now, weak and trembling, and said that she must defer the discussion of ways and means until the next day.

I put on my hat and went for a walk alone. 7 I was full of hope, and not at all depressed. Girls in these days are always glad to have something new to do, and in the first rush of it, the idea of leaving the humdrum path of ordinary society and of entering on a new and vigorous career filled me with ecstacy. I don't really think in the whole of London there was a prouder girl than the real Westenra Wickham; but I do not think I had ordinary pride. To know titled people gave me no special pleasure, and gay and pretty dresses were so common with me that I regarded them as the merest incidents in my life, and to be seen at big receptions, and at those "At Homes" where you met the most fastidious and the smartest folks, gave me no joy whatsoever. It is true I was very fond of my godmother, the Duchess of Wilmot, and of another dear little American friend, who had married a member of the Cabinet, Sir Henry Thesiger. But beyond these two I was singularly free from any special attachments. The fact is, I was in love with mother. Mother herself seemed to fill all my life. I felt somehow as if father had put some of his spirit into me, and had bound me over by a solemn vow to look after her, to comfort her, to guard her, until he himself came to fetch her, and now my thought of thoughts was how splendid and how necessary it would be to keep her usual comforts round my dainty, darling, lovely mother, to give her the food she required, and the comfortable rooms 8 and the luxury to which she was born; and I felt that my pride, if I could really do that, would be so great and exultant, that I should hold my head higher than ever in the air. Yes, I would have a downright good try, and I vowed I 

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