“If we were not in Debrett and Burke, one might be reserved about such matters,” poor Lady Claraway wrote; “but what is one to do when all the world can buy one’s daughters’ ages at the book-sellers’?”

Miss Fox-Seton had seen Lady Agatha’s portrait at the Academy and the way in which people had crowded about it.  She had chanced to hear comments also, and she agreed with a number of persons who had not thought the picture did the original justice.

“Sir Bruce Norman was standing by me with an elderly lady the first time I saw it,” she said, as she turned a new row of the big white-wool scarf her hostess was knitting for a Deep-Sea Fisherman’s Charity.  “He really looked quite annoyed.  I heard him say:  ’It is not good at all.  She is far, far lovelier.  Her eyes are like blue flowers.’  The moment I saw you, I found myself looking at your eyes.  I hope I didn’t seem rude.”

Lady Agatha smiled.  She had flushed delicately, and took up in her slim hand a skein of the white wool.

“There are some people who are never rude,” she sweetly said, “and you are one of them, I am sure.  That knitting looks nice.  I wonder if I could make a comforter for a deep-sea fisherman.”

“If it would amuse you to try,” Emily answered, “I will begin one for you.  Lady Maria has several pairs of wooden needles.  Shall I?”

“Do, please.  How kind of you!”

In a pause of her conversation, Mrs. Ralph, a little later, looked across the room at Emily Fox-Seton bending over Lady Agatha and the knitting, as she gave her instructions.

“What a good-natured creature that is!” she said.

Lord Walderhurst lifted his monocle and inserted it in his unillumined eye.  He also looked across the room.  Emily wore the black evening dress which gave such opportunities to her square white shoulders and firm column of throat; the country air and sun had deepened the colour on her cheek, and the light of the nearest lamp fell kindly on the big twist of her nut-brown hair, and burnished it.  She looked soft and warm, and so generously interested in her pupil’s progress that she was rather sweet.

Lord Walderhurst simply looked at her.  He was a man of but few words.  Women who were sprightly found him somewhat unresponsive.  In fact, he was aware that a man in his position need not exert himself.  The women themselves would talk.  They wanted to talk because they wanted him to hear them.

Mrs. Ralph talked.

“She is the most primeval person I know.  She accepts her fate without a trace of resentment; she simply accepts it.”

“What is her fate?” asked Lord Walderhurst, still gazing in his unbiassed manner through his monocle, and not turning his head as he spoke.

“It is her fate to be a woman who is perfectly well born, and who is as penniless as a charwoman, and works like one.  She is at the beck and call of any one who will give her an odd job to earn a meal with.  That is one of the new ways women have found of making a living.”