She did not realise that at that particular moment she was a most agreeable and comforting companion for Agatha Slade.

She had heard so much of her beauty during the season, and remembered so many little things that a girl who was a thought depressed might like to hear referred to again.

Sometimes to Agatha the balls where people had collected in groups to watch her dancing, the flattering speeches she had heard, the dazzling hopes which had been raised, seemed a little unreal, as if, after all, they could have been only dreams.

This was particularly so, of course, when life had dulled for a while and the atmosphere of unpaid bills became heavy at home.

It was so to-day, because the girl had received a long, anxious letter from her mother, in which much was said of the importance of an early preparation for the presentation of Alix, who had really been kept back a year, and was in fact nearer twenty than nineteen.
"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.