He alone knew how grateful he had cause to be to the woman who had saved him from joining the doomed throng who only live for play.
And now there was still to their friendship just that delightful little touch of sentiment which adds salt and savour to almost every relation between a man and a woman.

Though Blanche was some years older than Lionel, she looked, if anything, younger than he did, for she had the slim, upright figure, the pretty soft brown hair, and the delicate, finely modelled features which keep so many an Englishwoman of her type and class young--young, if not in years, yet young in everything else that counts.

Even what she sometimes playfully called her _petit vice_ had not made her haggard or worn, and she had never lost interest in becoming, well-made clothes.
Blanche Farrow thought she knew everything there was to know about Lionel Varick, and, as a matter of fact, she did know a great deal no one else knew, though not quite as much as she believed.

She knew him to be a hedonist, a materialist, a man who had very few scruples.

But not even to herself would she have allowed him to be called by the ugly name of adventurer.