‘And yet,’ she remarked, ’I have heard you speak severely of such marriages.’

‘It isn’t the ideal wedlock,’ replied Miss Barfoot.  ’But so much in life is compromise.  After all, she may regard him more affectionally than we imagine.’

’No doubt she has weighed advantages.  If the prospects you offered her had proved more to her taste she would have dismissed this elderly admirer.  His fate has been decided during the last few weeks.  It’s probable that the invitation to your Wednesday evenings gave her a hope of meeting young men.’

‘I see no harm if it did,’ said Miss Barfoot, smiling.  ’But Miss Vesper would very soon undeceive her on that point.’

’I hardly thought of her as a girl likely to make chance friendships with men in highways and by-ways.’

’No more did I; and that makes all the more content with what has come about.  She ran a terrible risk, poor child.  You see, Rhoda, nature is too strong for us.’

Rhoda threw her head back.

’And the delight of her sister!  It is really pathetic.  The mere fact that Monica is to be married blinds the poor woman to every possibility of misfortune.’  In the course of the same conversation, Rhoda remarked thoughtfully,—­

’It strikes me that Mr. Widdowson must be of a confiding nature.  I don’t think men in general, at all events those with money, care to propose marriage to girls they encounter by the way.’

‘I suppose he saw that the case was exceptional.’

‘How was he to see that?’

’You are severe.  Her shop training accounts for much.  The elder sisters could never have found a husband in this way.  The revelation must have shocked them at first.’

Rhoda dismissed the subject lightly, and henceforth showed only the faintest interest in Monica’s concerns.

Monica meanwhile rejoiced in her liberation from the work and philosophic seventies of Great Portland Street.  She saw Widdowson somewhere or other every day, and heard him discourse on the life that was before them, herself for the most part keeping silence.  Together they called upon Mrs. Luke, and had luncheon with her.  Monica was not displeased with her reception, and began secretly to hope that more than a glimpse of that gorgeous world might some day be vouchsafed to her.

Apart from her future husband, Monica was in a sportive mood, with occasional fits of exhilaration which seemed rather unnatural.  She had declared to Mildred her intention of inviting Miss Nunn to the wedding, and her mind was evidently set on carrying out this joke, as she regarded it.  When the desire was intimated by letter, Rhoda replied with a civil refusal:  she would be altogether out of place at such a ceremony, but hoped that Monica would accept her heartiest good wishes.  Virginia was then dispatched to Queen’s Road, and appealed so movingly that the prophetess at length yielded.  On hearing this Monica danced with delight, and her companion in Rutland Street could not help sharing her merriment.