But Jill did not stop on refusing the eligible owner of an unmortgaged estate.  No! she set out to look for work off her own bat, and actually found it in that occupation which, far less paid than more, opens up a perfect vista of possible adventures under the guise of a travelling companion.

She spoke French, German, and Italian like natives, which was all to the good.  She danced like a Vernon Castle, knew almost as much about fencing as a Saviolo, shot like a George V., and rode like a cowboy, all of which qualifications she erased from her list on the termination of the freezing half-hour of her first interview with her first would-be employer, who, until the enumeration of the above sporting qualifications, had seemed desirous of taking her along with a bronchitic pug to winter in Bath.

Since then she had done Europe and Africa pretty well with never the suspicion of an adventure, and, when you meet her on the station of Ismailiah, where you change for Port Said, she was returning from Australia, with a wardrobe at last beginning to fret about the hem, and shine around the seams, a condition accounted for by the emaciated condition of her purse; a memory of good things and hours worn thin by the constant nerve-wracking routine of capsules, hot drinks, hot water bottles, moods and shawls; and a fully developed rebellion in her whole being against the never-ending vista which stretched far into the future, of other such hours, days, months, yea! even years!

But everything was capped by a still more fully developed decision to brave it out, and out, and out, rather than return to ask the help of those whose hand-clasp had weakened in ratio to the dwindling of the gold in her coffers.

CHAPTER III

And why did she stand by herself?

This is no riddle, the answer being too easy.  Men would have answered, “Guessed in once, she was pretty!” And the women would guess in once too, but would keep silent, the pretty ones merely smiling, having sampled the Coventry-sending powers of plain women in the majority on board, and the plain ones from that unwillingness inborn or inherited in every woman to admit good looks, or good anything for that matter, in a member of her own sex.

And she was pretty, with the prettiness of youth allied to genuine red-gold hair, and the bluest of blue eyes, which looked at you in disconcertingly straight manner from between the longest black lashes you ever saw.

She sounds very much like a “Dainty Novel heroine,” but I have met her and I know, and she also had a mouth turned up at the corners, and the loveliest teeth, a nose which also turned up, not unduly, and a skin on which lay the merest suspicion of powder like dust on a butterfly’s wings, also two jet black grains de beaute, one at the corner of her mouth and the other on top of the left cheek, just under the outside corner of the eye.