“Anyhow,” returned Carrissima, “it can’t have been Mark’s account that set you against her.”

“Oh, of course,” exclaimed Lawrence, “Mark would swallow anything.”

“It is his business in life,” said Carrissima, with a laugh, “to make other people swallow things, isn’t it, Lawrence?”

He went away dissatisfied, and the following Monday afternoon Bridget Rosser paid her first visit to Number 13, Grandison Square.  Although her movements were even and unhurried, her appearance in her out-of-door garments was conspicuous.  The brim of her hat struck Carrissima as being a shade wider than that of any one else, her dress closer about the ankles, while yet she wore it without a trace of anything that could be called vulgarity.

“I should have come even earlier,” she said, taking Carrissima’s hand; “but I only got back from Sandbay this morning.  I have been staying since Saturday with my aunts; the dearest little Dresden china aunts in the world.  They are my mother’s sisters and they give me no peace.  You see, they are terribly Early Victorian.  You were saying that your brother insisted that no woman under forty is capable of looking after herself.  Well, Aunt Jane and Aunt Frances think honestly that I am going to perdition as fast as I can.”

“I suppose,” suggested Carrissima, “they would like you to live with them?”

“Oh dear! they are quite mad about it.  You know everybody is mad about something!  They write every week, but I positively couldn’t endure it.  Of course my father did his best to put me off, although I believe his chief objection was that they had a hatred of tobacco.”

“Still,” said Carrissima, “I don’t suppose you are a confirmed smoker and they might be good for you.  I don’t think I am Early Victorian, but still——­”

“Oh, I know!” cried Bridget; “but fancy wasting any little sweetness one may possess on the desert air of Sandbay.  I should simply go mad—­stark, staring mad.  Carrissima,” she continued, “I suppose you know heaps and heaps of people.  So did I when my father was alive—­people who do things, whose names you read in the papers, who think for themselves and make others follow their lead.  Oh, I long to be in the movement!”

Rising slowly from her chair, and with perfect coolness, she took a framed cabinet photograph from a table between the windows.

“Is this Colonel Faversham?” she asked.  “I remember him now quite distinctly.”

The portrait showed a man of middle height, rather taller than Lawrence, with much broader shoulders.  His face had an almost dissipated expression, and he wore a large, pointed moustache.  His hair was still plentiful, although it had been grey when Bridget last saw him; his eyes were somewhat prominent, and he held himself unusually erect.

“How old is your father?” asked Bridget.

“Sixty-five,” was the answer.

“He doesn’t look so old!”