greasy dish-cloths.  With no knowledge of cookery, they lived too much on tinned provisions—­a diet as wasteful as it was unwholesome—­ feeding their wash-and-scrub-women with the same; and their efforts to support the burden of their domestic responsibilities deprived them of outdoor exercise and mental rest and recreation—­kept them at too close quarters with one another, each rubbing her quivering prickles upon the irritable skins of the other two.  Frances bore the strain with least good-nature and self-control, and since she had to vent her ill-humour on someone, naturally made Miss Keene her victim when it was a choice between her and Deb.  The poor lady grew more and more disappointed, discouraged and tearful.  She became subject to indigestion, headaches, disordered nerves; finally fell ill and had to have the doctor.  The doctor said she was completely run down, and that rest and change of air were indispensable.  She went away to her relatives, weeping still, wrapped in Deb’s cloak, and with all Deb’s ready money in her pocket; and she did not come back.

Then Deb tried to carry on alone.  Any sort of registry office drudge would have been welcome now, but had become an expense that she dared not continue.  Moreover, the spectre of poverty, looming so distinct and unmistakable in the house, was a thing to hide, if possible, from anybody who could go outside and talk about it.  The thing had become a living terror to herself—­its claws Jew money-lenders, so velvety and innocent when her wilful ignorance made first acquaintance with them; but nobody—­not even Mr Thornycroft, not even Jim, certainly not Rose —­could be allowed to play Perseus to this proud Andromeda.  Until she could free herself, they were not even to know that she was bound.  Of course, she need not have been bound; it was her own fault.  She should have managed better with the resources at her disposal than to bring herself to such a pass, and that so soon; either Mary or Rose would certainly have done so in her place.  But Nature had not made her or Frances—­whose rapacities had been one cause of the financial breakdown—­for the role of domestic economists; they had been dowered with their lovely faces for other purposes.

That the fine plumage is for the sun was a fact well understood by Frances, at any rate.  And she was wild at the wrongs wrought by sordid circumstances—­her father’s and sister’s heedlessness—­upon herself.  She thought only of herself.  Deb was getting old, and she deserved to suffer anyway; but what had Frances done to be deprived of her birth-right, of all her chances of success in life?  Eighteen, and no coming out—­beautiful, and nobody to see it—­marriageable, and out of the track of all the eligible men, amongst whom she might have had her pick and choice.  She had reason for her passionate rebelliousness against this state of things; for, while a pretty face is theoretically its own fortune anywhere, we all see for ourselves how many are passed over simply for want of an attractive setting.  It was quite on the cards that she might share the fate of those beauties in humble life to whom romantic accidents do not occur, for all her golden hair and aristocratic profile, her figure of a sylph and complexion of a wild rose.