Her warmest friend and admirer--one might almost say slave--was Frederic Brood. She had transformed him. He was no longer the silent, moody youth of other days, but an eager, impetuous playmate, whose principal object in life was to amuse her. If anyone had tried to convince him that he could have regarded Mrs Desmond's dethronement and departure with equanimity he would have protested with all the force at his command. But that would have been a month ago! When the time came for his old friend to leave the house over which she had presided for ten of the gentlest years of his life, his heart was sore and his throat was tight with pain, but he accepted the inevitable with a resignation that once would have been impossible. From the outset he realised that Mrs Desmond would have to go. At first he rebelled within himself against the unspoken edict. Afterward he was surprised to find that he regarded himself as selfish in even wishing that she might stay, when it was so palpably evident that the situation could not long remain pleasant for either Mrs Desmond or Mrs Brood. He saw Lydia and her mother leave without the slightest doubt in his mind that it was all for the best. The Desmonds took a small apartment just around the corner from Brood's home, in a side street, and in the same block. Their windows looked down into the courtyard in the rear of Brood's home. Frederic assisted them in putting their new home in order. It was great fun for Lydia and him, this building of what they were pleased to call “a nest.” Lydia may have seen the cloud in their sky, but he did not. To him the world was bright and gladsome, without a shadow to mar its new beauty. He was enthusiastic, eager, excited. She fell in with his spirit, but her pleasure was shorn of some of its keenness by the odd notion that it was not to endure. He even dragged Yvonne around to the little flat to expatiate upon its cosiness with visual proof to support his somewhat exaggerated claims. Her lazy eyes took in the apartment at a glance and she was done with it. “It is very charming,” she said with her soft drawl. “Have you no cigarettes, Lydia?” The girl flushed and looked to Frederic for relief. He promptly produced his own cigarettes. Yvonne lighted one and then stretched herself in the Morris chair. “You should learn to smoke,” she went on. “Mother wouldn't like me to smoke,” said Lydia rather bluntly. A faint frown appeared on Frederic's brow, only to disappear with Yvonne's low, infectious laugh. “And Freddy doesn't like you to smoke either, _aïe?_” she said. “He may have changed his mind recently, Mrs Brood,” said the girl, smiling so frankly that the edge was taken off of a rather direct implication. “I don't mind women smoking,” put in Frederic hastily. “In fact, I rather like it, the way Yvonne does it. It's a very graceful accomplishment.” “But I am too clumsy to----” began Lydia.