"It is all like a long dream, beautiful, but oh, so sad," Vera said to Grannie, who was more sympathetic than usual upon this subject. "It has been an interesting experience for you, which one could never have hoped for in such an hotel as this," she said. "Dr. Wilmot tells me that Signor Provana has a house in Portland Place--the largest in the street, where he used to entertain the best people in his wife's time. Her rank and beauty gave distinction to his money; so I can believe Wilmot that he was by way of being a personage in London." Lidcott was packing the trunks, and the Bath chair, while Grannie talked. The luggage, except the trunk with Grannie's best velvet gown, and a frock or two for Vera, and the absolute needs of daily life, was to go by _Petite Vitesse_, which meant being so long without it, that old familiar things would seem new and strange when the trunks came to be unpacked. The long journey was dull--Grannie and Lidcott having a curious capacity for creating dullness. It was their atmosphere, and went with them everywhere. The change from summer sunshine to the grey sky and drizzling rain of an English April was a sad surprise; and the lodging-house in the street off Portland Place seemed the abode of gloom. It was the London season, and carriages and motor-cars were rolling up and down the handsome street in which Signor Provana's house had been described as the largest. Vera looked at all the houses as the cab drove past them, trying to find the superlative in size; but there was no time for counting windows or calculating space. The lodging-house drawing-room, albeit better furnished than Canincio's second-floor _salon_, looked unutterably dreary; for the miniatures and books, and old china, that were wont to redeem the commonness of things, were creeping along the shores of the Rhone or mewed up in an obscure station, and though flowers were cheap in the street-sellers' baskets, not a blossom brightened the dingy drawing-room. "How odious this house looks," said Lady Felicia, while she scanned the cards in a cheap china dish, and read the pencilled messages upon some of them. "I see your Aunt Mildred and your Aunt Olivia have called, surprised not to find us. But not a word from Lady Helstone, though I know she is in town. She was always heartless and selfish--but as she is the one I rely on for taking you about, we shall have to be civil to her." "Poor dear Grannie, I really don't want to be taken out. I don't care a scrap about Society--and, above all, I don't want to cost you money for clothes, and I couldn't go to parties without all sorts of expensive things." "Don't talk nonsense, Vera. I am used to scraping and pinching. It will only mean pinching a little harder. But there's time enough to settle all that before you are eighteen. Of course, you will have to be launched, if you are ever to marry--unless you want to sneak off to a registry office with the first scribbler you meet."